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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. . I 
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More Money for the Public 
Schools 



MORE MONEY FOR 
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



BY 

CHARLES W. ELIOT 




NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1903 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

APR 15 1903 

Copyright Entry 

CL/SS Ol XXc, No 

COPY /. 



0* 

v -V 



Copyright, 1903, by 

Doubleday, Page & Company 

Published, April, 1903 



More Money for the Public Schools, 

Because of the Failures and 

Shortcomings in American 

Education 

[An address before the Connecticut State Teachers' 
Association on October 17, 1902.] 



MORE MONEY FOR THE PUBLIC 

SCHOOLS 

MY object in this paper is to urge 
that the expenditure per pupil 
in the common schools of the 
United States is altogether insufficient. 
As foundation for my argument, I must 
first state what the annual expenditure 
per pupil now is. For this purpose I 
avail myself of the table of annual 
expenditure per pupil which is to appear 
in Commissioner Harris's Report for 
1900-1901, an advance copy of which 
has kindly been given me. 

The average expenditure per pupil 
3 



4 Shortcomings of American Education 

for the whole school year in the United 
States was then $21.14; but this expen- 
diture varies very much in the different 
divisions of the country. Thus the 
average expenditure per pupil in the 
North Atlantic Division of the United 
States is $33.52, while in the South 
Central Division it is only $7.54. It 
also varies very much in the different 
States of the Union. Thus the highest 
expenditure is made in New York, 
namely, $41.68; the next highest in the 
District of Columbia, $40.50; the next 
highest in Nevada, $39.70; the next in 
Colorado, $38.29; the next in Massa- 
chusetts, $38.21. On the other hand, 
the lowest expenditures occur in the 
South Atlantic and the South Central 
Divisions, North Carolina spending 



Average Expenditure Per Pupil 5 

annually $4.56 per pupil; Mississippi, 
$6.48; Georgia, $6.68. The Western 
Division (which includes the Pacific 
Coast) has in general a high average 
expenditure per pupil, coming next to 
the North Atlantic Division. 

This total average expenditure for 
the year being divided by the average 
number of days during which schools 
are kept in the several divisions or States 
(that is, by the average length of the 
school term in days), yields another 
interesting figure, namely, the average 
daily expenditure per pupil. For the 
whole United States this average daily 
expenditure in 1900-1901 was 14.7 
cents ; but again the range of the average 
daily expenditure per pupil is large. 
The Western, or Rocky Mountain and 



6 Shortcomings of American Education 

Pacific, Division pays most per pupil 
per day, namely, 22 cents; the North 
Atlantic Division pays 18.9 cents daily 
for each pupil; whereas the South 
Atlantic Division pays but 8.6 cents, 
and the South Central but 7.8 cents. 
The highest daily expenditures per pupil 
occur in the Western Division. Thus 
Montana spends 27.9 cents per day; 
Colorado, 25.8 cents; Nevada, 25.6 
cents ; whereas the District of Columbia 
spends 23 cents; Massachusetts, 20.7 
cents; New York, 22.4 cents. Here, 
again, the South Atlantic Division and 
the South Central Division present the 
lowest figures. Maryland spends 9.9 
cents per pupil per day; Virginia, 8.2 
cents; North Carolina and Georgia, 6 
cents; South Carolina, 5.3 cents; 



Percentage Expenditure on Salaries 7 

Louisiana, 7.3 cents; Arkansas, 8.2 
cents. 

Still another instructive figure is the 
percentage of the total school expendi- 
ture which is devoted to salaries. In 
the country the expenditures on sites for 
buildings are nothing, or very small; in 
cities the expenditures for this purpose 
are necessarily heavy. Again, the mis- 
cellaneous expenses vary much in differ- 
ent localities ; so that it is interesting to 
see what percentage of the total expen- 
diture in any division of the country, 
or in any State, goes to salaries. This 
figure is far less variable than the figures 
I have already quoted. In the United 
States as a whole the percentage of the 
total school expenditure devoted to 
salaries is 63.2 ; in the different divisions 



8 Shortcomings of American Education 

of the United States the percentage 
varies from 57.2 in the North Atlantic 
Division to 83.6 in the South Central 
Division, this Division, which makes 
a very small total expenditure per 
pupil, namely, $7.54, devoting 83.6 
per cent, of this total expenditure to 
salaries. The State of New York, on 
the other hand, which has numerous 
large cities within its borders, devotes 
only 59.1 per cent, of its total school 
expenditure to salaries; because it is 
obliged to spend on sites and buildings 
nearly a quarter of its total annual 
output. The District of Columbia is in 
the same situation; and in Massachu- 
setts only 60 per cent, of the total expen- 
diture goes for salaries. Among the 
States it is curious to observe that the 



The Average School Term 9 

largest percentages for salaries occur 
in the least advanced States; thus 
Nevada gives 83.4 per cent, to salaries; 
Arkansas, 85.1; Texas, 88.1; South 
Carolina, 86.7. 

Another fact which throws light on 
the present situation of the American 
child of school age is the length of the 
school term in the different parts of our 
country. The average length seems to 
be 144 days; but this figure is only 
approximate, and needs interpretation, 
or at least an understanding of the 
methods of computation by which it is 
obtained. It indicates, however, that 
the average school term does not exceed 
twenty-five to thirty weeks in the year. 

Another figure which has great inter- 
est is the average number of days of 



io Shortcomings of American Education 

schooling provided during the year for 
every child from five to eighteen years 
of age. This number of days is sup- 
posed to be 68.3 in the United States as 
a whole. In the different divisions this 
figure varies from forty-one and a 
fraction in the South Atlantic and South 
Central Divisions to 87.5 in the North 
Atlantic Division. These last figures 
are taken from Commissioner Harris's 
Report for 1899-1900. The report is 
careful to point out the uncertainty 
which affects the figures, in consequence 
of the incompleteness of the returns, 
and of the different methods employed 
in different States for computing these 
results. For my present purpose it is 
safe to regard them as a rough approxi- 
mation to the actual facts. 



Public School Accounting n 

While these figures are in your minds, 
let me ask attention to the common 
practice of including the cost of school 
sites and buildings in the so-called school 
expenditure of the year. Thus, in 
the State of New York, nearly a quarter 
of what was called the school expendi- 
ture in i9oo-'oi went to sites and build- 
ings; and in New Jersey, Minnesota, 
Kansas and Washington more than a 
quarter. It seems to me that a method 
of accounting should be used which 
would not seem to throw this sort of 
expenditure or any part of it on the 
school resources of a single year. When 
a city obtains a new water-supply, or 
makes important additions to its old 
one, or builds a new city hall or a 
costly bridge, it meets the outlay by an 



12 Shortcomings of American Education 

issue of long bonds, which really spreads 
the expenditure over many years. When 
the Boston Metropolitan District wanted 
parks, and spent $10,000,000 in pro- 
curing them, it was at pains to spread 
the original expenditure for those 
parks over many years. The same 
method would be perfectly just in regard 
to school sites and school buildings. 
These are expenditures made for future 
generations, as well as for the present; 
or, rather, they are made in much larger 
proportion for the benefit of the future 
than of the present. While, therefore, 
everything which relates to the main- 
tenance of schools, as of parks or water- 
supplies, should be chargeable as expen- 
diture of the current year, outlays for 
new sites and buildings ought not to 



Construction Is Not Maintenance 13 

appear in the annual school accounts. 
At the outside, only interest and sinking- 
fund charges on such outlays ought to 
appear in the annual accounts. In 
studying the total annual school expen- 
diture per pupil in any one community, 
and particularly in making comparisons 
between different communities in regard 
to school outlays, it is important to bear 
in mind this too common practice of 
including expenditures for sites and 
buildings in the reported annual school 
expenditure per pupil. Thus the 
District of Columbia is reported as 
spending $40.50 per pupil per year; 
but the significance of this figure is 
considerably modified by the fact that 
in 1 900-1 90 1 $9.54 out of this sum 
went for sites and buildings. The 



14 Shortcomings of American Education 

individual child going to school in the 
District had only $30.96 spent on its 
education. That child's privileges were 
determined by the existing school plant 
and the outlay in that year for sal- 
aries, equipment, and maintenance. In 
Colorado in that same year the actual 
present child got $32.93 out of a total 
expenditure of $38.29. It is hardly any 
object for a town or city to keep an 
open account of its expenditures for its 
school plant, for the reason that it is 
impossible to compute the return from 
that investment. A portion of the 
return from park expenditures can be 
computed — namely, the rise in the 
valuations of the neighbouring private 
lands or lots ; but the best part of the 
return — the increased health and happi- 



Private School Charges 15 

ness of the population — cannot be 
estimated in money. Water-supplies 
yield an income in a proper financial 
sense, so that it is worth while to keep 
an account with them as municipal 
investments. Not so with school plants 
— the return on them being beyond the 
reach of computation. 

Let us now compare the annual 
expenditure on the public school child 
with what is made by a well-to-do 
family on its child sent to an endowed 
or a private school. In many American 
cities it is now the private school which 
receives the children of well-to-do par- 
ents ; and this school charges a tuition fee 
of from $100 to $500 a year for day 
pupils . You may suppose that the higher 
fees are paid in cities like New York and 



1 6 Shortcomings of American Education 

Philadelphia ; but the highest fee that I 
know for a day pupil is charged by a 
private school at Louisville — namely, 
$500 a year. The endowed secondary 
schools are mostly situated in the 
country or in small towns ; and in these 
boarding-schools the total charge for 
the year per pupil may be said to vary 
between $400 and $1,000. Now, it is 
perfectly easy to provide lodging and 
food for any pupil between the age of 
ten and eighteen at a cost of $5 a week; 
so that the charge for tuition and 
general care, and sometimes interest on 
the plant, at these institutions must be 
from $200 to $600 a year of forty 
weeks. It is fair to state that some of 
the more expensively endowed schools 
make an elaborate and costly provision 



Endowed School Charges 17 

for the physical training of their pupils 
and their outdoor sports. For the 
public school child no such provision is 
ordinarily made. If you ask on what 
these large annual fees are expended, 
the answer is chiefly on teaching. A 
public school which has a teacher for 
every forty pupils is unusually fortunate ; 
the private and endowed schools of the 
country not infrequently provide a 
teacher for every eight or ten pupils. 
Moreover, they employ a more expen- 
sive kind of teacher; for they use as 
teachers a larger proportion of men, and 
a larger proportion of college graduates, 
both men and women. For children 
of from six to ten years of age there is a 
very similar disproportion between the 
fee in private schools and the expendi- 



1 8 Shortcomings of American Education 

ture per pupil in the public schools; 
thus private kindergartens not infre- 
quently charge $100 a year for each 
child, and in private country schools for 
young children the charges approach 
those made in the private or endowed 
secondary schools. 

The practice of employing tutors and 
governesses in single families is con- 
stantly increasing in the United States, 
and it is noteworthy that salaries are 
often paid to persons so employed which 
are decidedly higher than the salaries 
paid public school teachers, although 
they may have charge of only three or 
four children, or sometimes of a single 
child. 

I cite these figures simply to show 
that well-to-do Americans, who can 



Families Pay Freely for Education ig 

afford to spend on the education of their 
children whatever seems advantageous, 
are ready to spend liberally for their 
children's education. It is not neces- 
sary to my argument to assume that the 
expenditures thus made by well-to-do 
families are always judicious ; an expen- 
sive private or endowed school may 
have serious drawbacks, which offset 
some of its obvious advantages; but 
the figures I have cited show what 
thousands of American parents think 
it their interest to spend on the educa- 
tion of their children; and these thou- 
sands, belonging to the families most 
successful pecuniarily, probably repre- 
sent the more intelligent and far-seeing 
families. I, of course, have not in mind 
the excessively rich; because their task 



20 Shortcomings of American Education 

in educating their children is made 
infinitely more difficult by the very 
fact of their excessive riches. I have in 
mind the ordinary, successful, profes- 
sional man or business man, who earns 
money enough in a year to be able to 
afford for his children the best training 
he knows how to give them. 

Compare now a tuition fee of from 
$100 to $600 with the annual expendi- 
ture on the public school child in the 
most liberal States; with the expendi- 
ture, for instance, of $30 per child per 
year in Massachusetts, or of $32 in New 
York, after deducting in both instances 
from the total expenditure the cost of 
sites and buildings . Compare these high 
tuition fees again with the total expen- 
diture per child and per year of $4.32 in 



Multiplying School Cost by Five 2 1 

South Carolina, or of $8.32 in Kentucky, 
or of $9.77 in Texas — the expenditures 
on sites and buildings being in each case 
deducted from the total expenditure. 
Is it not plain that if the American 
people were all well-to-do they would 
multiply by four or five the present 
average school expenditure per child 
and per year? That is, they would 
make the average expenditure per pupil 
for the whole school year in the United 
States from $80 to $100 for salaries 
and maintenance, instead of $17.36 as 
now. Is it not obvious that instead of 
providing in the public schools a teacher 
for forty or fifty pupils, they would 
provide a teacher for every ten or fifteen 
pupils? Would there not be a play- 
ground around every schoolhouse? If 



22 Shortcomings of American Education 

the American people thought they could 
afford it, would not a schoolhouse be 
kept in as perfect sanitary condition as 
a hospital? Fifty years ago nobody 
knew how to keep either a schoolhouse 
or a hospital in a wholesome state ; now 
we do know how, and the hospitals are 
kept safe, but the schoolhouses are not. 
I wish to urge on you the proposition 
that the American people cannot afford 
to persist in the present low school 
expenditure per pupil and per year. 

It appears from the table herewith that of the 
twenty largest American cities one spends less 
for schools than for police; thirteen spend less 
than twice as much for schools as for police ; four 
spend less than two and a quarter times as much 
for schools as for police; one spends three times 
as much, and one three and four-tenths times as 
much. These ratios are remarkable, considering 
that police, however indispensable, only protect 
the community partially from crimes, disorders, 
and nuisances — that is, from the grossest forms 



School and Police Expenditure 23 

of evil — while schools build up in intelligence 
and character the human constituents of the 
future community itself. This table was pre- 
pared at the instance of Professor Calvin M. 
Woodward, of St. Louis, by the Bureau of 
Education at Washington, which relied for the 
facts concerning the police departments on 
Bulletin No. 42 of the Department of Labor, 
September, 1902. Professor Woodward (for a 
local purpose which was promptly fulfilled) 
recast the table ; and it is his form which is given 
on page 24. 

My first argument in support of this 
proposition is that, as a nation and on 
the whole, in spite of many successes, 
we have met with many failures of 
various sorts in our efforts to educate 
the whole people, and still see before us 
many unsurmounted difficulties. It is 
indisputable that we have experienced 
a profound disappointment in the results 
thus far obtained from a widely diffused 
popular education. It was a stupen- 



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Barbarian Vices Survive 25 

dous undertaking at the start, and the 
difficulties have increased with every 
generation. Our forefathers expected 
miracles of prompt enlightenment ; and 
we are seriously disappointed that 
popular education has not defended 
us against barbarian vices like drunken- 
ness and gambling, against increase of 
crime and insanity, and against innu- 
merable delusions, impostures, and 
follies. We ought to spend more 
public money on schools, because 
the present expenditures do not pro- 
duce all the good results which 
were expected and may reasonably 
be aimed at. I proceed to the un- 
welcome task of enumerating some 
of our disappointments with popular 
education. 



26 Shortcomings of American Education 

For more than two generations of 
men we have been struggling with the 
barbarous vice of drunkenness, but 
have not yet discovered a successful 
method of dealing with it. The United 
States has dealt with the drinking 
habits of the people merely as a source 
of revenue. The legislation of most of 
the States has been variable, and in 
moral significance uncertain. In some 
of the States of the Union we have been 
depending on prohibitory legislation; 
but the intelligence of the people has 
been insufficient either to enforce such 
legislation or to substitute better. This 
is an accusation not against the moral 
disposition of the majority of the 
people, but against their reasoning 
power ; and it is precisely that reasoning 



The Survival of Drunkenness 27 

power which good schools ought to 
train. Unquestionably drunkenness has 
diminished, and the habitual use of 
strong drink is less common than it was 
fifty years ago ; but it is not the will of 
the people, as expressed in legislation 
and the enforcement of legislation, 
which has brought about this improve- 
ment. In an attempt to use the schools 
as a means of promoting total abstinence 
from intoxicating drinks a grave injury 
has been done to the teaching of all the 
sciences in the schools ; because many 
statements about alcohol, which are not 
known to be true, and which are appar- 
ently contradicted by the common 
observation of the children themselves, 
have been forced into the schools. This 
mode of combatting the tendency to 



28 Shortcomings of American Education 

use alcoholic drinks has been devised 
and executed by conscientious women; 
yet it would be hard to imagine a less 
intelligent mode. The public schools 
ought to have made it impossible that 
benevolence and devotion should be 
so misdirected. The courts have failed 
to deal wisely with habitual drunkards 
as a class, both the theory and the 
practice of fines and short imprison- 
ments as applied to drunkards being 
entirely futile. 

The persistence of gambling in the 
United States is another disappointing 
thing to the advocates of popular educa- 
tion ; for gambling is an extraordinarily 
unintelligent form of pleasurable excite- 
ment. It is a prevalent vice among all 
savage people, but one which a moderate 



Gambling Is Common 29 

cultivation of the intelligence — a very 
little foresight and the least sense of 
responsibility — should be sufficient to 
eradicate. It persists, not only in 
frontier settlements and mining camps, 
but in country villages in all parts of 
the country, and in the large towns and 
cities. The passion for gambling affects 
the markets not only for stocks and 
bonds, but for the great staples of 
commerce and the necessaries of life. 
All the competitive sports are damaged 
by it; and in the forms of betting and 
of playing games for money even some 
educated men and women are not 
ashamed of it. 

Next, it must be confessed that the 
results of universal suffrage are not 
in all respects what we should have 



30 Shortcomings of American Education 

expected from a people supposed to be 
prepared at school for an intelligent 
exercise of the suffrage. Our fathers 
expected that good government would 
flow from universal suffrage as natur- 
ally as the brook flows from its wooded 
watershed. We have discovered from 
actual observation that universal suf- 
frage often produces bad government, 
especially in large cities. The means 
of popular education are ampler in large 
cities than they are in the country; 
but to all appearances the existing 
urban schools, regarded as means of 
training voters, cannot contend suc- 
cessfully against the urban influences 
adverse to the voter's good sense and 
good will. A striking illustration of 
the failure of universal suffrage, when 



Unpunished Crimes Abound 31 

exercised by an -uneducated population, 
was given in the southern states during 
the period of reconstruction — so called. 
It is a reproach to popular education 
that the gravest crimes of violence are 
committed in great number all over 
the United States, in the older states 
as well as in the newer, by individuals 
and by mobs, and with a large measure 
of impunity. The population produces 
a considerable number of burglars, rob- 
bers, rioters, lynchers and murderers, 
and is not intelligent enough either 
to suppress or to exterminate these 
criminals. The immense majority of 
the population is orderly and peaceable, 
but lacks the invention or the determina- 
tion to prevent these incessant viola- 
tions of its peace. This is a grave 



32 Shortcomings of American Education 

indictment against popular education 
in our country. The extinction of 
these savage crimes against individuals 
and society would certainly be one 
result of successful universal education. 
Again, the nature of the daily reading 
matter supplied to the American public 
affords much ground for discourage- 
ment in regard to the results thus far 
obtained by the common schools. It 
would be easy to point out encouraging 
symptoms in regard to the reading of 
the people; but the most obvious 
phenomenon is that the people consume, 
and seem to demand, vast quantities of 
daily reading matter which is coarse, 
trivial, and unimproving, and in parts 
even immoral. Since one invaluable 
result of education is a taste for good 



Masses of Bad Reading Matter 33 

reading, the purchase by the people of 
thousands of tons of ephemeral reading 
matter which is not good in either form 
or substance shows that one great end 
of popular education has not been 
attained. Unless the publishers of daily 
newspapers in all civilized countries 
are wrong in their judgment of what 
people demand — which is very unlikely — 
there is an active demand for a deal of 
foolish, false, or degrading narrative 
and fiction. From the point of view 
of the social philosopher or the ethical 
reformer this is the worst disappoint- 
ment of all in regard to the results of 
the common school education of the 
nineteenth century. 

A similar unfavorable inference 
concerning popular education may be 



34 Shortcomings of American Education 

drawn from the quality of the popular 
theatres of to-day. The popular taste 
is for trivial spectacles, burlesque, vul- 
gar vaudeville, extravaganza, and melo- 
drama; and the stage often presents 
to unmoved audiences scenes and situa- 
tions of an immoral or unwholesome 
sort. If public education had been 
mentally and morally adequate, surely 
the public theatre would be very much 
better than it is to-day. 

Americans are curiously subject to 
medical delusions; because they easily 
fall victims to that commonest of fal- 
lacies — post hoc, ergo propter hoc. They 
are the greatest consumers of patent 
medicines in the known world, and the 
most credulous patrons of all sorts of 
"medicine men" and women, and of 



Medical Delusions 35 

novel healing arts. This mental con- 
dition of millions of our countrymen 
is very discreditable to the common 
schools; for after reading, writing, and 
simple ciphering have once been 
acquired as tools, the very next thing 
a school should begin to do for its pupils 
is to teach them the difference between 
an antecedent event and a true cause — 
or in other words, to impart the power 
of drawing a just inference. I say the 
school should begin to do this; because 
the process is a long one, and is insepar- 
ably associated with training in accurate 
observing and recording. Is it not a 
just inference from the openness of the 
American mind to medical delusions 
that the common schools have not done 
what they ought to have done toward 



36 Shortcomings of American Education 

developing in the whole population the 
power to reason justly? 

That labor strikes should occur more 
and more frequently and be more and 
more widespread has been another 
serious disappointment in regard to the 
outcome of popular education. The 
whole eastern half of the United States 
has been forcibly reminded this summer 
of the stupidity, wastefulness, and 
ineffectiveness of strikes, considered as 
remedies for social or industrial wrongs. 
It should be observed, however, con- 
cerning this disappointment, that it 
results in large measure from a diffi- 
culty which accounts for a good many 
troubles in the United States, namely, 
the difficulty of assimilating year after 
year large numbers of foreigners. 



Secrecy or Publicity 37 

The managers, leaders, and promoters 
of strikes are frequently foreigners, or 
persons whose parents came to this 
country from Europe, and a large pro- 
portion of the men who engage in them 
are of foreign birth. To be sure, it 'is 
only a small fraction of the total 
laboring population of the United 
States which is organized in labor- 
unions ; but this small fraction is active, 
and possesses in combat the usual advan- 
tages which result from compact organ- 
ization. The labor-union is itself a 
secret organization, which avoids respon- 
sibility before the law by refusing to be 
incorporated; and, as we have all seen 
lately, the strike is often resorted to for 
reasons not made public, or at least not 
made public till after the strike has 



38 Shortcomings of American Education 

taken place. To use in industrial con- 
flict this weapon forged m secret is to 
exhibit an utter lack of faith in the very 
best means of remedy for industrial 
wrongs, namely, publicity. When the 
capitalists or the middlemen who resist a 
strike do so without publishing their 
reasons, the demonstration of lack of 
faith in publicity is complete. Yet 
publicity is the great security for 
democracy; the best weapon against 
political, social, industrial, or commer- 
cial wrongdoing, and, in the long run, 
the most trustworthy means of political 
and social progress. To distrust pub- 
licity is to distrust the intelligence and 
ethical sense of the people, the only safe 
foundations for free institutions. It 
seems as if democratic schools ought to 



Industrial Wars Are Stupid 39 

have brought forward in a hundred 
years generations of workmen and 
employers that would hold firmly in all 
their affairs to the fundamental, moral 
ideas on which the republic rests; but 
this success popular education has not 
achieved. The industrial wars which 
so seriously diminish the productiveness 
and prosperity of the country are 
evidences that the common schools 
have not grappled successfully with the 
tremendous problem put before them; 
and this remark applies just as much 
to the employers as to the employed. 
It is to be said for the labor-unions 
that they heartily believe themselves 
to be contending at present sacrifice 
for the future good of the working class 
— even of the non-union men, whose 



40 Shortcomings of American Education 

independent conduct of their own 
affairs the unions now condemn. And 
the same faith is to be discerned in the 
employers who combine to resist a 
strike. They, too, believe that at 
present sacrifice they are contending 
for the future good of their class and 
of the country. When I use these 
industrial conflicts to illustrate the 
inadequacy of American schools, I am 
impugning not the motives of the com- 
batants, but their intelligence — an intel- 
ligence which such education as the 
country supplied has left seriously 
defective. In these days such con- 
flicts, if they have reasonable grounds, 
are ultimately settled by reason; yet 
the parties to them are often stupid 
enough to try for months to settle them 



Marriage and Divorce 41 

by force — that is, by inflicting pecuniary 
losses and physical and moral injuries, 
and creating widespread confusion and 
alarm. Verily, as Franklin said: 
" Experience keeps a dear school: but 
fools will learn in no other, and scarce 
in that." It is clear that American 
common schools have not succeeded in 
preventing that sort of fool from 
abounding. 

In certain parts of American social 
life in which the ideal standards have 
been held high there has sometimes 
come lamentable failure. For example, 
there is one element of American free- 
dom which many of our people have 
valued very highly, but which has pro- 
duced results of a character peculiarly 
disappointing. I refer to that freedom 



42 Shortcomings of American Education 

in social relations between the sexes 
which is supposed to result in marriages 
based on love and natural affinity, 
rather than on family interests, pecu- 
niary negotiations, or considerations of 
social advancement. Here is a region 
in which one would think that the hap- 
piest results should have flowed from 
freedom combined with diffused educa- 
tion; and certainly, when American 
marriages are happy, they are very 
happy. But there are formidable 
facts on the other side of the 
account. The statistics of American 
marriage and divorce seem to show a 
frightful proportion of unhappy mar- 
riages, of sterile marriages, and of mar- 
riages which result in a small number of 
children; while to match the statistics 



The Spoils or Patronage System 43 

of divorce among people of American 
descent in some of our states one has 
to go to Moslem communities. In this 
all-important department of American 
life it is clear that the free schools have 
not prevented the development of for- 
midable evils. Now, home and school 
react on each other. Whatever impairs 
family relations increases the difficul- 
ties of schools and colleges; whatever 
raises the school improves family life. 
The enlightening and conservative in- 
fluence of the school in social matters 
is to-day all the more needed because 
the control formerly exercised by the 
church has been loosened. 

The spoils or patronage system in 
the civil service of the United States 
illustrates in a striking way the inade- 



44 Shortcomings of American Education 

quacy of the training supplied by the 
public schools. This mortifying dis- 
play of popular obtuseness reached its 
climax at about the end of the second 
third of the nineteenth century, and 
has since been very slowly declining. 
It was a real fooling of the people by 
catchwords and plausibilities, a sacri- 
fice of the large public interest to 
small private interests, and a wide- 
spread application in a republic of the 
methods habitually used by aristocra- 
cies to corrupt and rule the plebeians, 
including one of the most demoralizing 
of those methods, the establishment of 
numerous sinecure offices. To be sure 
some original follies were added, such 
as a low scale of salaries in the higher 
offices and a high scale in the lower, and 



Spoils System Fools the People 45 

a rapid rotation in office which gave 
the long-suffering public a succession 
of inexperienced and therefore incompe- 
tent servants. Many people have sup- 
posed that the introduction, develop- 
ment, and tenacity of the patronage 
system in the United States were evi- 
dences of moral perversion in the mass 
of the people. Doubtless there has often 
been moral obliquity in the patrons 
and sometimes in the patronized ; but it 
seems to me that in the great mass 
of the people it has been chiefly lack 
of perceiving and reasoning power 
which has caused them to submit to, 
or even encourage, the patronage sys- 
tem. They have neither seen straight 
nor reasoned clearly about its undemo- 
cratic, corrupting, and inefficient qual- 



46 Shortcomings of American Education 

ity. They have not understood how 
demoralizing to youth is the hope of 
getting on in the world by the unearned 
favor of powerful persons. Now a 
popular education which leaves many 
millions of the people in this mental 
condition on a subject which touches 
nearly their daily welfare and the 
safety of free institutions is surely 
inadequate to the needs of the republic. 
Lastly, the final test of the value of 
the education given to an individual 
or to a nation is continuous mental 
growth. The human body has a con- 
tinuous development up to the age of 
twenty-five or thereabouts, should then 
have a long period of level health and 
strength, and after sixty may be ex- 
pected to decline. There should be no 



The Supreme Human Felicity 47 

corresponding stages in mental develop- 
ment. The growth of a man's mental 
and spiritual powers should be con- 
tinuous through life, and his last years 
should be his best. It is this continu- 
ous mental development which proves 
better than anything else that the 
education received in youth was effec- 
tive, and that the subsequent mode of 
life has been all along wholesome and 
improving. If we include in this growth 
the development of what is called 
character, this continuous enlargement 
and improvement is the supreme human 
felicity. Now there are two common 
obstacles to the attainment of this 
felicity — the first is the untimely arrest 
of education in youth; the second is 
the dulling and contracting effect of 



48 Shortcomings of American Education 

many methods of earning the livelihood. 
Any comprehensive survey of the social 
and industrial conditions of the Amer- 
ican people will bring an open-minded 
inquirer to the conclusion that these 
two obstacles to the continuous develop- 
ment of the human individual are both 
formidable to-day. For millions of 
American children systematic education 
stops far too soon; and for millions of 
adults the mode of earning the liveli- 
hood affords so little mental training, 
and becomes so automatic, that mental 
growth is seriously hindered, if not 
arrested. I find here a strong argu- 
ment for the expenditure of more 
public money on the education of the 
children, that they may be held longer 
in the schools with greater profit and 



Importance of a Taste for Reading 49 

greater enjoyment, and therefore have 
a better chance for continuous growth 
afterward; and, secondly, I find in 
these considerations a strong argument 
for a moderate number of hours of daily 
labor in those occupations which have 
little variety and call for little exercise 
of an intelligent judgment. These un- 
fortunate conditions may be best 
resisted in the individual case, or in a 
million cases, by the steady gratifica- 
tion of a sound taste for reading ; and the 
implanting of this taste in every child 
before it leaves school is therefore a 
matter of supreme importance. How 
else is the child who leaves school at 
twelve, fourteen, or sixteen years of 
age to feed its mind ? How else is the 
adult to nourish and expand his mental 



50 Shortcomings of American Education 

powers, if he must spend ten hours a 
day in tending a machine, or in making 
day after day and year after year in his 
regular occupation the same observa- 
tions through eye and ear, and doing 
the same things with hand or finger in 
the same order or with incessant repeti- 
tion? In such cases — and they occur 
by millions — it is in reading and in 
the play of the domestic affections and 
the social interests that lie all the possi- 
bilities of mental and spiritual growth. 
Shall we not all agree that from this 
point of view the American schools 
have thus far been much less serviceable 
than they ought to have been, or, at 
least, than we want them to be ? 

These illustrations will suffice to 



Disappointments in Other Fields 51 

convince us that the results of American 
education have hitherto fallen far short 
of the hopes and expectations of its 
founders and advocates, and that it has 
great tasks before it if it is to promote 
effectively public righteousness and the 
general welfare and happiness. But 
these great tasks will involve the greater 
expenditures I am pleading for. 

To console us teachers, however, I 
hasten to say that it is not in national 
education alone that we have suffered 
heavy disappointments. Our predeces- 
sors of a century ago expected that 
when churches were freed from all con- 
nection with the state, and were sup- 
ported by the voluntary contributions 
of their several bodies of adherents, 
everybody would attach himself to the 



52 Shortcomings of American Education 

church of his choice; and so religious 
teachers would have access to the entire 
population. We have learned by experi- 
ence that under the voluntary system a 
large portion of the population never 
goes into a church. We thought that 
universal suffrage would be in itself a 
great educational influence — as indeed 
it is. We have learned that it is not a 
panacea for all social ills. The Aboli- 
tionists of i860 and the Republicans of 
1865 thought that the Negro would take 
care of himself if only he ceased to be a 
slave; but after Negro experience of a 
comparatively large degree of personal 
liberty for a whole generation the nation 
still has a fearful Negro problem on its 
hands ; and millions of our countrymen 
maintain that no white man should 



Cities Better Governed Elsewhere 53 

invite a black man, however agreeable 
and interesting, to eat with him, and 
imagine that political equality neces- 
sarily carries with it social intercourse 
on terms of equality, whereas universal 
experience is entirely to the contrary. 
The average American thinks to-day 
that free institutions must necessarily 
produce a more satisfactory public 
service than can be procured under 
monarchies or empires ; but the ancient 
city of Rome, the capital of a monarchy, 
has to-day a much lower death-rate 
than any large American city. The 
city government of Glasgow can not 
only provide water, highways, bridges, 
sewers, street-cleaning, schools, fire 
departments, parks, public libraries, 
and art galleries for its 800,000 people, 



54 Shortcomings of American Education 

but can also supply gas, electricity, 
wash-houses, markets, lodging-houses, 
homes for widows or widowers having 
young children, and street railways; 
and all these good things, in addition 
to what New Haven or Boston does, 
Glasgow does at very low rates to the 
public, and with profits to the city itself. 
For a small-scale comparison of the same 
sort, take the little English colony of 
Bermuda, with a resident population of 
6,000 whites and 10,000 blacks. There 
is mail delivery of letters and parcels 
at every house on that island twice 
a day ; and the books of the colony's 
library in Hamilton are carried by the 
mail free to and from any house on the 
island. I know no American rural 
community which enjoys the like privi- 



Public Service Better Elsewhere 55 

leges. The fact is that a good many 
public services are performed by govern- 
ments which we should not describe as 
free, better than they are performed by 
the corresponding departments of our 
own government; or, in other words, 
free institutions have not produced in 
three generations better public service 
in all respects than other institutions, 
although they are in themselves more 
educative than any other. Herein is a 
grave disappointment for democrats by 
inheritance and conviction. This is not 
saying that there is any people in the 
world more fortunate on the whole, or 
happier on the whole, than the American 
people. Thus, the municipal govern- 
ment of Philadelphia is very inferior to 
the government of Berlin; but for the 



56 Shortcomings of American Education 

average working and thinking man 
Philadelphia is a happier place to live 
in than Berlin. The government of 
Boston is, as a government, inferior to 
that of Glasgow; yet Boston is, on the 
whole, a vastly better place to live in 
than Glasgow. The other effects of 
social and political freedom make the 
northern United States the most pros- 
perous community in the world, in spite 
of the fact that the efficiency and moral 
tone of the public service is in some 
departments better in less free countries 
than in our own. Our people are too 
impatient for peerless fruitage from the 
slow-growing tree of liberty; we all 
expect sudden miracles of material and 
moral welfare — we get only a slow 
development and a halting progress. It 



American Education a Novel Problem 5 7 

is not then in regard to public educa- 
tion alone that democratic hopes 
and expectations have been seriously 
disappointed. 

Let us now consider briefly some of 
the unprecedented difficulties which 
American education has not yet been 
able to overcome. 

It is a huge and novel problem with 
which education in our country has been 
struggling from the first starting of 
schools and colleges in the American 
wilderness ; and the problem has all the 
time become larger, and still persists 
decade after decade in proving novel. 
We are trying to prepare all American 
boys and girls for a life of unprecedented 
freedom — freedom of thought and 



58 Shortcomings of American Education 

speech; freedom to travel, to change 
the place of abode, and to change the 
occupation; freedom to enter into any 
sort of public or secret association or 
union ; freedom from everything resem- 
bling castes or insurmountable social 
or political barriers. No other country 
of the civilized world — not even the 
Australasian Confederation — offers its 
children so complete an exemption from 
the social and industrial limitations 
which in the past have hedged the way 
of the tradesman, the mechanic, and the 
peasant. Moreover, in no other civi- 
lized country of the world is there such 
an absence of effective police supervi- 
sion as in the United States. One must 
say that there is none in country dis- 
tricts, and that in urban districts it 



The Law Has No Strong Arm 59 

is ordinarily ineffective. Even well- 
known members of the criminal class 
are under no effectual control, and by 
merely changing from time to time 
their field of operations often succeed 
in preying on the community for years. 
The law has no strong arm. On the 
continent of Europe the army seizes on 
every able-bodied youth, and subjects 
him during from one to three years 
to a severe discipline which does some 
good to the least civilized of the con- 
scripts. There is nothing of that kind 
in the United States. The task of 
American schools and colleges has, 
indeed, been a novel one from the start ; 
for they must not only train the intelli- 
gence of every pupil, but implant moral 
restraints and ideal standards, which 



60 Shortcomings of American Education 

will help him through the perils of an 
unexampled liberty. 

It is then for a society of unprece- 
dented mobility and unprecedented 
freedom of action that the American 
schools and colleges are endeavoring 
to prepare their pupils. Good results 
of this extreme mobility and freedom, 
as well as bad, are evident on every side. 
The son of a shiftless, roving, pioneer 
farmer becomes through extraordinary 
gifts of body and soul President of the 
United States ; an illegitimate boy in an 
obscure country town becomes a preach- 
er, teacher, and author of distinction ; 
innumerable men of humble origin, 
brought up in narrow conditions, be- 
come leaders in industry, trade, finance, 
and the professions. The population is 



Diversity of American Families 61 

characterized by restless ambition, the 
spirit of adventure, the love of things 
new, and irrepressible personal initia- 
tive. It is for a community different from 
any that ever before existed in the world 
that the American schools and colleges 
are trying to educate all the children. 

Again, American schools and colleges 
have a task without precedent, because 
of the extraordinarily varied nature 
of the families to which their pupils 
belong. It is impossible for a day 
school to replace family culture, or to 
make good the lack of a sound intellec- 
tual and spiritual influence at home. 
In all our cities, even the oldest, the 
schools have to deal with families of 
various races, religions, and social his- 
tories. Thus, Boston in the eighteenth 



6 2 Shortcomings of A merican Education 

century had a very homogeneous popu- 
lation ; at the beginning of the twentieth 
it has a population of extraordinary 
diversity. The country is assimilating 
people from all over Europe; and it is 
the American school which effects the 
greater part of the assimilation. No 
other schools and colleges in the world 
have such a task. It is this difficulty 
which so retards the success of the new 
efforts to teach the English language 
and literature in the public schools. A 
day-school can hardly overcome the 
effects of rude speech, or foreign speech, 
at home. If the multifarious people 
who emigrate to America had had 
experience of public liberty, the task 
would be easier ; but the greater part of 
them have had experience of oppression, 



Rapid Changes in American Life 63 

of economic defeat, or of impene- 
trable social hedges. No wonder that 
American schools and colleges have 
staggered under this almost unsup- 
portable burden. 

Again, our schools and colleges have 
been trying to prepare their pupils for 
a subsequent life out in a world which 
has itself been shifting and changing 
with an unprecedented rapidity. The 
life for which the American schools 
should now prepare their pupils is an 
utterly different life from that for which 
the schools were preparing the children 
forty years ago — or even twenty years 
ago. All the scenes have shifted within 
a single generation. The younger peo- 
ple in this hall can hardly imagine 
the elementary condition of the Ameri- 



64 Shortcomings of American Education 

can cities only two generations ago. 
You will permit me to take Boston as 
an illustration, because it was and is 
an old, rich, well-settled place with 
which I have been familiar. The little 
city had no water-supply, no sewers, no 
gas, no street-railways, no well-paved 
streets, no paid fire department, hardly 
any police (and that not uniformed), 
no public library, no electricity, no 
screw steamers, and no park except the 
Common; and foreigners were so few 
and strange that a serious riot took 
place in Broad Street when my father 
was mayor which was entirely due to 
racial and religious prejudices between 
the Protestant Americans and the 
Catholic Irish. It is obvious that noth- 
ing resembling the complex, intense, 



The Rise of New Evils 65 

and stimulating city life of to-day could 
have existed in such a community. The 
schools and colleges have hardly been 
able to keep pace with the astonish- 
ingly rapid changes in the industrial 
and social conditions of the population. 
Indeed, American school committees 
have often proved themselves incom- 
petent to provide beforehand against 
the plainly visible shifting of population 
from the heart of a city to its suburbs, 
or against the steady inrush from the 
country to the city. We have made 
great advances in regard to preventive 
medicine and sanitation, and these 
improvements have been shared by the 
schools; yet new evils are constantly 
arising in our urban communities, and 
the beneficent discoveries in medicine 



66 Shortcomings of American Education 

and surgery hardly keep pace with the 
new evils which result from the con- 
gestion of the population. Thus the 
schools struggle with the problem of 
contagious diseases among their pupils, 
and slowly become less troublesome as 
propagating houses for mumps, measles, 
scarlet fever, smallpox, and diphtheria ; 
but to offset this gradual improvement 
new centres or sources of infection are 
constantly created, such as crowded 
street cars, populous tenement -houses, 
un ventilated public halls, thronged 
eating-houses and workrooms, filthy 
paper money, and the fouled water- 
supply, celery bed, oyster-bed, or dairy. 
The whole world has been made 
over since 1850, and with many new 
powers for good there have come in 



The World Made Over Since 1850 67 

many new powers for evil. We have 
to-day telephones, telegraphs, subma- 
rine cables, the great ocean steamship, 
sewing machines, mowers and reapers, 
street-railways, subways, turbines, elec- 
tric motors and lights, and steam- 
engines innumerable ; and from all these 
things immeasurable benefits have 
flowed; but they have given us also 
huge factories, masses of operatives 
who spend their lives tending impera- 
tive machines, or making only some 
small fraction of a complex product, 
overcrowded tenements, vast cities, 
formidable combinations of capital on 
the one hand and of laborers on the 
other, the rifle which kills at a mile and 
a half, the Lyddite shell, and the 
battle-ship. As I said a year ago at the 



68 Shortcomings of American Education 

celebration of the two hundreth anni- 
versary of Yale University, "industrial, 
agricultural, and social conditions have 
so changed that not a man or woman 
in our broad country now works in the 
same way or to the same results as men 
and women worked in 1701 — not a sol- 
dier or a sailor fights to-day in the least 
as soldiers and sailors fought when 
Yale was born. The most vital change 
of all is a new spirit animating the 
corporeal mass of civilized society, a 
spirit pervasive, and aggressive — the 
all-modifying spirit of Christian democ- 
racy." The American schools and col- 
leges have had to readjust themselves 
incessantly to these sweeping changes 
in the condition of society; and it is 
not to be wondered at if they have 



Schools Have Been Left Behind 69 

often failed to keep pace with the rapid 
steps of this wonderful transformation. 
It must be confessed that the schools 
have not changed and improved so 
much as the means of transportation, 
or of manufacturing, or of lighting and 
heating, or of farming, or of mining. 
The schools have, of course, improved; 
but they have not kept pace with the 
industrial and social development of 
the past fifty years ; not enough money 
has been expended for them, and so 
they are still using obsolete plants 
and methods. 

One of the principal changes in 
American society within the last fifty 
years has had a profound effect on 
schools and colleges, namely, the trans- 
fer of the great majority of the popula- 



70 Shortcomings of American Education 

tion from the country to the city. 
Children brought up in the country 
get a deal of invaluable training from 
their rural surroundings. They roam 
the fields and wade in the waters, 
observe plant and animal life, use and 
take care of domestic animals, help 
their fathers and mothers in the work 
of the house and the farm, and thereby 
get invaluable training — first in obser- 
vation, secondly in attention to the 
task in hand, and thirdly, in good 
judgment when at work — the judgment 
which prevents waste of strength, and 
distinguishes between the essential or 
immediately necessary in productive 
labor, and the unessential and defer- 
able. A roaming country child, brought 
up on a farm, learns unconsciously 



The Lost Training of Country Life 7 1 

from nature much that it is almost 
impossible to impart to a city child. 
In city schools we have been for twenty 
years past laboriously trying to provide 
substitutes for this natural training in 
country life. The recent natural history 
study from specimens used indoors, 
the manual training in carpentry, forg- 
ing, filing, and turning, the garden-plots 
and roof -gardens, the vacation schools, 
and the excursions to parks and mu- 
seums, are all sincere efforts to replace 
for urban children the lost training of 
eye and hand which country life sup- 
plied. It is impossible to exaggerate 
the importance of these substitutes; 
but after all they are inferior to the 
spontaneous, unenforced results of living 
in contact with nature, and of taking 



72 Shortcomings of American Education 

part with mother and father in the 
productive labors of a farm, a market 
garden, a hennery, or a dairy. What 
children acquire in the spontaneous, 
intense, self-directed use of their facul- 
ties is always more valuable than the 
results of a less eager though more 
prolonged attention to enforced tasks. 

These considerations may be accepted 
as reasonable explanations of the short- 
comings of American education. They 
do not alter the facts that the disap- 
pointments of its advocates and friends 
have been many and deep, and that 
immense difficulties beset its path. 

What should be the effect on our 
minds to-day of these disappointments 
and of these unsurmounted difficulties ? 
Surely a new and hearty resolution to 



One Wisdom for Family and Nation 73 

do what we can to make the schools 
better and more effective to all righteous 
ends. But this greater effectiveness 
unquestionably means greater costliness. 
The heavier the disappointments of the 
past, and the graver the present diffi- 
culties, the firmer should be our resolves 
for the future, and the more urgent our 
appeals to the governors and leaders of 
the people to appropriate more money 
to the free schools. Could anybody 
imagine it to be unreasonable to spend 
for the mental and moral training of a 
child as much as is spent on his food? 
If that equality in expenditure could be 
established all over the Union, there 
would result a prodigious improvement 
in the public schools. I have already 
pointed out that well-to-do families 



74 Shortcomings of American Education 

spend a great deal more on the educa- 
tion of their children than on their food 
and lodging, and this is undoubtedly 
family wisdom, whether it be viewed 
from the material or the spiritual side. 
In all probability, what is wise for a 
well-to-do family would be wise for the 
nation as a whole. 



More Money for the Public Schools, 

Because of the Gains Made 

in American Education 

[An address before the New Hampshire State Teachers' 
Association on October i8, 1902.] 



THE GAINS MADE IN EDU- 
CATION 

YESTERDAY, at New Haven, 
in advocating larger expendi- 
ture on the public schools, I 
dealt with some of the many failures 
and disappointments that our people 
have suffered in regard to the results 
of the common -school system. To-day 
I propose to point out the substantial 
gains which the American schools and 
colleges have made during the past 
thirty years — gains which have all 
involved increased expenditure on edu- 
cation — and to draw from these costly 
77 



78 The Gains Made in Education 

gains, which the people have approved, 
encouragement for still larger expendi- 
tures in the future. 

The first gain I wish to mention 
is the kindergarten, which was tardily 
introduced into our country, and is 
not yet widely adopted as part of the 
public school system. It is a com- 
paratively expensive addition to a 
school system; because the proportion 
of pupils to a teacher is small in the 
kindergarten, each child receiving 
more of the personal attention of the 
teacher than is ordinarily given in a 
primary or grammar school. The 
best effects of the kindergarten have 
been produced by its insistence on 
invariable gentleness, on interesting 
the child, and on avoiding long 



Contributions of the Kindergarten 79 

periods of attention to one subject. 
Gentleness takes more time and 
patience than peremptoriness or 
violence, and is therefore more costly; 
to interest children requires more 
effort than to drive them to the per- 
formance of set tasks, and is therefore 
more costly. As I look back on the 
schools of which I have had personal 
observation, I perceive that on the whole 
the stupidest thing in their arrange- 
ments was the long period of attention 
to one subject. Nothing can be more 
unnatural to a young child than atten- 
tion to the same subject for half an hour ; 
a minute is a much more natural period 
than half an hour, and a healthier one. 
Even for students of university age, or 
for such an audience as this, it is doubt- 



80 The Gains Made in Education 

ful whether fifty-five minutes be not an 
impossible period for really sustained 
attention. There are few adult students 
whose attention does not wander from 
the lecturer's words within half an hour. 
About this matter schools and colleges 
of every grade have learned much from 
the kindergarten, that costly addition 
to the American public school system. 
They have also learned from it much 
about the importance of dealing with 
the individual child, rather than with 
large groups of children. In this respect 
kindergarten methods and the methods 
of the conference or seminary at the 
university closely resemble each other. 
Again, as the university professor is 
ordinarily provided with a very service- 
able young assistant, who is an intelli- 



Teachers' Assistants 81 

gent and well-trained aspirant to the 
university career, working like an ap- 
prentice for low pay, so the kinder- 
gartner has her helpful assistant, 
who is hoping to learn the business 
— an arrangement highly suggestive 
for all school grades. The kinder- 
garten also sets an excellent example 
to all schools in making it part 
of the teacher's function to know 
something personally of the families 
from which her pupils come. We shall 
never get the education of children 
between six and fourteen right till this 
kindergarten method runs through the 
primary and grammar schools, or, in 
other words, through the first eight 
grades. These lessons from the kinder- 
garten have been taught by the estab- 



82 The Gains Made in Education 

lishment of a few kindergartens in com- 
paratively few communities; but they 
indicate perfectly clearly what great 
profit to the children a moderate 
addition to school expenditure can 
yield. 

In the selection of the studies of the 
first eight school years out of the twelve, 
there has been substantial improvement 
within thirty years. Thus there are 
more observation studies on the pro- 
gramme, less arithmetic, and a little 
more geography ; less spelling and gram- 
mar, and more literature ; wiser teaching 
of geography as a natural-history sub- 
ject, and not an account of obsolete or 
trivial political divisions, and a list of 
names of bays, capes, rivers, mountains 
and capitals ; a better teaching of history 



The Sins of the Fathers 83 

as a story of discoveries, industries, 
commerce, peoples, and institutions, 
and not of battles and dynasties. These 
improvements in the selection of studies 
have all involved additional cost. 
Arithmetic is a very cheap subject to 
teach; so are spelling and the old- 
fashioned geography. As to teaching 
history in the old-fashioned way, any- 
body could do that who could hear a 
lesson recited. To teach nature studies, 
geometry, literature, physiography, and 
the modern sort of history requires 
well-informed and skilful teachers, and 
these cost more than the lesson-hearers 
did. But how slowly these improve- 
ments make their way, and how inevi- 
tably the sins of the fathers are visited 
on the children to the third and fourth 



84 The Gains Made in Education 

generation ! Bad traditions in educa- 
tion die hard. At this moment some 
parents in whom I am interested cannot 
prevent the time and strength of their 
boy of nine from being wasted on the 
study of arithmetic at his first school. 
He must go to a school and not be taught 
alone ; that school thinks it must meet 
the requirements for admission to the 
neighbouring school for older boys; 
and there the requirements for admis- 
sion in arithmetic are somewhat 
strenuous, although that school pre- 
pares most of its boys for Harvard 
College, and there is no examina- 
tion in arithmetic for admission 
to Harvard. One-tenth of that little 
boy's school time given to arith- 
metic would be too much; but he 



The Aims of the Primary School 85 

is giving about one-quarter, and his 
parents are helpless. The other day 
that same boy was behaving unsuitably, 
and, after patient remonstrance, his 
mother told him that he must either 
do as she wished or leave the room. 
He reflected for a moment, and 
then remarked — "Yes, that's fair," 
and amended his behavior. That 
judicial comment affords, to my 
thinking, greater promise of subse- 
quent usefulness in the outer world 
as it is than any amount of accurate 
figuring. The true aims in a primary 
school are to store the mind with 
fair pictures, implant ideals, cultivate 
the habit of intense though brief atten- 
tion, and train the sense of justice. 
Let us, however, take courage from 



86 The Gains Made in Education 

the gains already made in regard to 
the selection of studies in the first eight 
grades, and press toward further gains 
of the same sort, at additional cost. 
Another urgent need of the first eight 
grades is greater attention to the indi- 
vidual, which means fewer pupils to 
a teacher, and minuter classification 
according to quality and capacity; but 
these improvements will all cost money. 
Important improvements in the pro- 
grammes of secondary schools — the 
schools which claim our children from 
fourteen to eighteen years of age — have 
also taken place. Thus, fewer subjects 
are now required of the individual pupil 
than formerly, although more subjects 
are taught in the schools . This is a great 
change for the better ; because the atten- 



The Fateful Forking of the Ways 87 

tion of the pupil can be more concen- 
trated on kindred subjects, and one 
or two subjects may be carried beyond 
the elements. You perceive, however, 
that this improvement must have 
involved larger expenditure. To carry 
it further will, of course, involve larger 
expenditure still. 

Again, it is a great improvement in 
secondary education that more and 
more the important decision concerning 
the termination of education can be 
postponed. It makes an incalculable 
difference in the future career of a boy 
or girl, whether his or her education is 
to stop at fourteen, at eighteen, at 
twenty-one, or at twenty-five, and the 
longer that vital decision can be post- 
poned the better. When our boys had 



88 The Gains Made in Education 

to decide at fourteen between the high 
school which could not possibly get 
them into college or scientific school, 
and the Latin school which could ; or 
between a classical course, which would 
permit them to enter higher institutions 
of education, and an English course, 
or a commercial course, which would 
not, the most important decision in 
the young life of the individual, most 
important both for himself and for his 
family, was made far too early. The 
postponement of the forking of the 
ways in secondary schools, whether 
public, private, or endowed, and the 
gradual introduction of the elective 
system into such schools are both 
valuable improvements in the direction 
I have indicated. You cannot fail to 



The High School Gains 89 

observe, however, that this postpone- 
ment of the forking is largely a ques- 
tion of expense. In earlier days the 
Latin school cost much more than the 
English high school; and to-day the 
classical course costs much more than 
the English or the commercial course. 
If, then, the forking be postponed 
till the sixteenth or seventeenth year, 
it follows that a more costly education 
is given to all children from the four- 
teenth up to the sixteenth or seven- 
teenth year. 

It has been my professional duty for 
more than thirty years to watch the 
gradual improvement of the education 
given in the public high schools; and 
there is no more striking phenomenon 
in the whole course of American educa- 



90 The Gains Made in Education 

tion than that improvement. I doubt 
if there be any educational development 
which has more clearly commended 
itself to the American people as a whole. 
The increased resort to high schools 
since 1885 is convincing evidence that 
the improved opportunities are under- 
stood and appreciated. Are we not 
justified in drawing from this approved 
increased cost encouragement for still 
further increase of cost, not only in the 
secondary schools, but all along the 
line? But again we are forced to 
notice that these improvements pene- 
trate American schools and colleges as a 
whole only very slowly. The past year 
was the first year of a promising experi- 
ment in Boston on election of studies in 
the public high schools — an experiment 



Country Schools for Boys 91 

all the more promising because made 
with so much power in the hands of 
head-masters as to insure a variety of 
experimentation. 

The continuous creation of new sec- 
ondary schools for boys, placed agree- 
ably in the country, has been a notice- 
able phenomenon during the past thirty 
years. The old New England acade- 
mies were in part killed, and in part 
stunted, by the establishment of the 
public high schools sixty years ago, 
although the strongest of them — like 
Exeter and Andover — survived. The 
revival of the country boarding-school 
is due in part to denominational zeal. 
The Episcopalians led the way in this 
revival, the Presbyterians and Unita- 
rians following after; some of the old 



92 The Gains Made in Education 

Baptist and Methodist seminaries have 
been preserved; and a few of the old 
denominational academies have been 
rebuilt and reendowed. Other motives, 
however, have impelled toward the 
same end. The growth of the cities and 
large towns has made it difficult for 
parents to bring up boys in the cities 
under healthful conditions, and the 
luxury of the home life among some rich 
people has proved prejudicial to their 
children. The parents themselves have 
seen this, and have adopted the Euro- 
pean remedy of sending the children 
away from home. Now all these schools 
are much more costly than the day- 
schools which are open to the same 
boys at their parents' places of resi- 
dence. Their creation shows that large 



The Endowed Schools A re Leaders g 3 

numbers of American families are pre- 
pared to spend money freely on the 
education of their children. The crea- 
tion or preservation of this considerable 
group of endowed secondary schools is 
a fortunate circumstance for the entire 
public; for these schools are on the 
whole more progressive in their methods 
of instruction and discipline than the 
public schools. Their resources gen- 
erally permit them to employ more 
teachers in proportion to the number of 
pupils than the public schools are per- 
mitted to employ; they can hold their 
pupils to their tasks better than the 
public schools, because they have them 
under control all the time ; and they can 
take better physical care of their pupils 
than is possible at schools situated in 



94 The Gains Made in Education 

closely built cities. Their methods and 
expenditures, therefore, point the way of 
progress for the primary and secondary 
schools which are supported by taxa- 
tion, allowance being made for the dif- 
ference between boarding-schools and 
day-schools. It is interesting to see 
that the same social conditions which 
determine the maintenance of good 
boarding-schools in England and on the 
Continent are creating similar schools 
in the United States. They are useful 
to families that live a large part of the 
year in the country, where no good day- 
school is to be found, and to families 
which travel or live in foreign parts, and 
wish to have their children educated 
in this country. If many well-to-do 
American families are to pass consider- 



Improvement in School Buildings 95 

able portions of their lives in Cuba, 
Porto Rico, Hawaii, and the Philippines, 
as many British families do in British 
dependencies, there will result an 
increasing demand for good country 
schools in salubrious parts of the United 
States. Such schools will need to 
combine as far as possible the good 
influences of home, school and church. 
They are sure to be costly. 

Within twenty years past there has 
been throughout the country a striking 
improvement in school buildings, the 
expenditure for this purpose having been 
in many communities very generous. 
These new buildings are much better 
heated and ventilated than schoolhouses 
used to be. They are also kept rather 
cleaner than schoolhouses were formerly, 



96 The Gains Made in Education 

although there have been within recent 
years some extraordinary revelations 
concerning the infrequency with which 
schoolrooms are thoroughly cleaned. 
In general, cleanliness is very imper- 
fectly enforced in schoolhouses, whether 
in the city or in the country. The 
standard of cleanliness in hospitals and 
infirmaries is much higher than it is in 
schools, which, of course, should not be 
— the hospital being only a palliative or 
curative for existing evils; the school 
being a positive, productive, and con- 
structive power for good. Architects 
should be just as careful about their 
mouldings and corners in a school 
building as in a hospital; and dust 
should be as scrupulously removed 
from one class of buildings as from 



Schoolhouse and Hospital 97 

the other. In the light of recent dis- 
coveries concerning germs and dust, 
it is strange that in most of the heating 
apparatus used in our houses, school- 
houses, and churches, convenient access 
to the air-ducts (cold and hot) is very 
seldom thought of. We let the interiors 
of our cold -air boxes and our hot-air 
flues go for years without cleaning, 
because they are apt to be so built in 
and covered up that they are not 
accessible to brushes and sponges. In 
spite of these defects, however, the 
increased expenditure on school build- 
ings and the furniture and apparatus 
they contain is a very encouraging sign 
that the public is prepared for still 
further expenditure on education. 
The improvement of heating and 



98 The Gains Made in Education 

ventilating apparatus in schoolhouses 
has, however, brought a new charge on 
the teacher. Such apparatus will sel- 
dom run itself. Its defects have to be 
constantly watched and reported on, 
and to do this intelligently the teacher 
needs to know something about the 
construction of the apparatus itself 
and its mode of action. In the southern 
parts of our country the heating and 
ventilating apparatus is much less 
important than in the northern. In 
the South very simple means of heating 
can be used, and the windows will 
serve for ventilation. The healthiest 
and most vigorous set of children that 
I ever saw in a school were the pupils 
of a Scotch school, called the " Dollar 
Institution," in the town of Dollar. 



Fresh Air Every Hour 99 

The schoolhotise had the simplest means 
of heating and no means of ventilation. 
The wholesome method in use was to 
turn everybody out of the building 
for five minutes at the end of each 
hour, all the windows being thrown 
wide open; teachers and pupils alike 
went out of doors for these five minutes. 
It was snowing hard at the time of 
my visit; but that made no difference. 
This successful method, however, re- 
quires something which most of our 
city schools lack — namely, an open 
space about the schoolhouse large 
enough for hundreds of pupils to walk 
and run about in. 

The cost of urban public school 
systems has been materially increased 
during the last twenty years by the 



ioo The Gains Made in Education 

institution of four new kinds of school — 
the manual training school, the mechanic 
arts high school, the evening school and 
the vacation school. All these branches 
of the public school organization were 
introduced into our country by private 
beneficence, and have only gradually 
been adopted into public school sys- 
tems. The manual training school, the 
mechanic arts high school and the 
vacation school are undoubtedly perma- 
nent institutions of public education. 
Evening schools may or may not prove 
permanent. At present they remedy 
deficiencies of education in young people 
who are of foreign birth or who 
have too early gone to work to support 
themselves or their parents. If public 
education were universal and thor- 



Four New Kinds of School 101 

oughly effective the evening school 
would not be so much needed. Its 
duration as an institution will therefore 
depend on the rate at which public 
school systems improve in efficiency. 
All these new branches of public instruc- 
tion are somewhat expensive additions 
to the ordinary day schools — the 
mechanic arts high school being par- 
ticularly expensive, as well as very 
useful. The utility of manual training 
for city children has been thoroughly 
demonstrated, and there can be no 
doubt that this somewhat costly form 
of instruction will be maintained and 
developed. The acceptance of these 
four new kinds of school as schools 
properly to be supported by taxation 
illustrates strikingly the readiness of 



102 The Gains Made in Education 

the American population to undertake 
new burdens for the education of its 
youth. 

Great improvement in the quality of 
the teachers in American schools has 
taken place within the last thirty years. 
The improvement is due to several 
causes . In the first place , the education 
of teachers on the average has greatly 
improved. The higher education of 
women has benefited the schools very 
much, for many women educated in 
colleges have become school-teachers. 
The recent elevation of normal schools 
is having a like beneficial influence on 
the primary and secondary schools. 
These institutions were for many years 
after their first establishment through 
the influence of Horace Mann little 



Lifting the Normal Schools 103 

more than high schools of moderate 
excellence; they were better than the 
poorest high schools, but not so good as 
the best ; their requirements for admis- 
sion were low, and they offered a short 
cut to the business of teaching. In 
Massachusetts, where normal schools 
began, a great gain has been effected by 
requiring for admission to the normal 
schools the previous accomplishment 
of a high-school course of study. This 
advance is so recent that its full effects 
are by no means worked out. The com- 
ing decade should amply demonstrate 
them. Secondly, the methods of select- 
ing and appointing teachers are much 
better than they used to be. The 
examinations for admission to city 
school systems are more adequate than 



104 The Gains Made in Education 

they formerly were, and positions are 
filled, to a greater extent than formerly, 
by sensible, competitive methods, based 
on proved merit. There are, of course, 
large remnants of patronage methods; 
but they are slowly being condemned 
as injurious to the schools, and dis- 
creditable to all who use or profit by 
them. On the whole, the tenure of 
school-teachers is longer and juster than 
it used to be. Still another encouraging 
feature is the steady approach toward 
an adequate pension system. No large 
body of teachers can possibly be kept 
in the most efficient condition without 
a pension system ; and since a judicious 
pension system is by no means costly, 
it may be hoped that before long this 
method of promoting the efficiency of 



Pensions for Teachers 105 

public and endowed schools will be 
generally adopted. The present — not 
uncommon — method of keeping en- 
feebled or aged teachers at work on 
their full salaries wastes money and 
injures the children. Justice, mercy, 
and a reasonable frugality all combine 
to urge the creation of a pension system 
for teachers. That soldiers, sailors, 
policemen and firemen should have pen- 
sions for disability or long service, and 
that disabled teachers should not, is a 
preposterous inversion of the true order. 
Retiring allowances are rapidly being 
introduced into the better universities 
of the country, with the best effects on 
university services ; and it is high time 
that the public school systems procured 
analogous advantages. Even commer- 



106 The Gains Made in Education 

cial companies, like railroads, find 
it advantageous to establish pension 
systems. Reviewing these changes in 
the education, modes of appointment, 
and tenure of school-teachers, it is 
obvious that they all tend to make the 
teachers more highly trained for their 
work, and more permanent in service. 
That means, of course, higher salaries, 
and a heavier total charge for salaries in 
the public schools. No change in the 
condition of the public schools can be 
more important than this, and what has 
already been done in this direction is 
evidence that the community will here- 
after go further in the same direction. 
Within twenty years there has 
been an increasing employment of 
educational experts in the surpervis- 



Functions of School Committees 107 

ing and executive functions of 
urban school systems. The former 
method of entrusting executive func- 
tions to small subcommittees of 
a large school committee is passing 
away ; and we may reasonably hope that 
this method will soon be extinct. It 
has long outlived its usefulness. The 
school committee of a large city should 
be a small body of much-trusted citi- 
zens, serving without pay, whose duties 
should be to determine the general 
policy of the system, and to select the 
educational experts who perform all 
supervising and executive functions. 
This transformation has been effected 
in a few American cities with the best 
results, and is to be recommended 
wherever the size of the system is 



108 The Gains Made in Education 

sufficient to warrant the employment 
of even a single expert superintendent 
and a single business manager. The new- 
officers cost more than the old-fashioned 
sub -committees that served without 
pay, but no new expense for public 
education has so completely justified 
itself as this in both city and country. 
The remarkable increase which has 
taken place within the past fifteen 
years in the proportion of American 
children who attend secondary schools 
is a great educational gain for the 
whole country. The causes of this 
sudden increase are probably numerous, 
and different in different communi- 
ties; at any rate, they are complex, 
and one cannot feel sure what they are. 
Probably parents realize more and 



Increased Use of High Schools 109 

more that the more prolonged the edu- 
cation of a child, the better his or her 
chance will be in the competition to 
which every newcomer is exposed in the 
world of industry and commerce. The 
opening of many new employments 
to women has had some effect to increase 
the resort to high schools, just as it 
has surely increased the resort of 
women to colleges. Child labor in 
factories is a bar to school attendance; 
but no such objection applies to the 
new occupations for women in the 
commercial world, since these occupa- 
tions are hardly accessible to women 
before eighteen or twenty years of age. 
It is true that the attendance at the 
high school diminishes too rapidly in 
the successive years of the course; but 



no The Gains Made in Education 

every year gained by the pupil is well 
worth having. Indeed, there are com- 
petent observers who think it would 
be wise to blur as much as possible the 
line between the grammar schools and 
the high school, by carrying studies 
now confined to the high school down 
into the grammar schools, and post- 
poning as much as possible the segre- 
gation of the more advanced pupils in a 
separate building. By these changes 
the grammar-school course could be 
much improved; and a larger body 
of pupils could be held under instruc- 
tion after their fourteenth or fifteenth 
year. Another suggestion looking to 
the same end is the six-years' high- 
school course. You have doubtless 
observed that the change now under 



The Costly Elective System in 

consideration has involved substantial 
increase in the cost of the schools 
supported by taxation, and that this 
increase has been borne with satisfac- 
tion by the communities concerned. 

The successes obtained in the higher 
education of the country during the 
past thirty years admirably illustrate 
the fact that much more money has 
been spent on education by the genera- 
tion now in activity than by any of 
its predecessors, and spent with entire 
satisfaction. The greatest educational 
success of the last thirty years is the 
complete adoption of the elective system 
in a few institutions, and its partial 
and progressive introduction in almost 
all. Yet the elective system is indefi- 
nitely more costly than the prescribed. 



ii2 The Gains Made in Education 

It should be remembered that it is a 
system, and not an unorganized chaos, 
or a distracting bazaar; it has made 
real scholarship possible to thousands 
of young Americans by the time they are 
twenty-two years of age; it has raised 
very much the standard of labor for 
both teachers and taught in our colleges 
and universities; and it has made it 
possible for thousands of American 
students to win that delight in study 
which accompanies the sense of mastery 
or of clear achievement. It has also 
improved immeasurably the relations 
between professors and students, molli- 
fied college discipline, and greatly 
ameliorated the manners and customs 
of college students. As yet it has by 
no means wrought out all the good 



Better Teachers 113 

it can do; but it is firmly established 
throughout the country, and thus far 
it has followed in other institutions the 
same stages of development that it 
followed at Harvard. Indeed, this 
development follows everywhere the 
same lines; so that one may prophesy 
in any institution, where it is partially 
developed, what the next step will be. 
It is an inevitable result of the immense 
increase of human knowledge in the 
nineteenth century. Accompanying this 
great administrative success is another 
improvement in the higher education 
which is of the utmost value. The 
standard of attainment for professors 
has been very much raised during the 
past thirty years ; and even for a subor- 
dinate position in a college faculty, the 



ii4 The Gains Made in Education 

standard is now immeasurably higher 
than it was when I was appointed a 
tutor in Harvard College in 1854. 
This change means that the university 
teacher now undergoes a longer and 
more thorough preparation for his 
function: and accordingly the univer- 
sity teacher must be recompensed for 
this longer training by a higher salary. 
In no department of education has 
greater improvement been made during 
the past generation than in professional 
education. The whole provision for 
training young men for the new scien- 
tific professions has been created in this 
country during the last fifty years; 
and America's success in the scientific 
industries is evidence that the new 
schools of science and technology have 



Improved Professional Training 115 

done good work. It is to be remarked 
that an important part of trie training 
for the scientific professions is labora- 
tory work — the most expensive form 
of teaching now known ; for it is teach- 
ing addressed to the individual student 
by experts. The changes, however, in 
education for the old professions of 
divinity, law, and medicine are quite 
as striking as the new creations for 
applied science. If I were asked to 
say in what department of Harvard 
University the educational change had 
been greatest since 1870, 1 should answer 
the Medical School. There, and in 
many other medical schools of the 
United States, the whole method of 
instruction has been changed root and 
branch; and the raw material of the 



n6 The Gains Made in Education 

school — the incoming students — has 
changed to an extraordinary degree 
within the same period. In 1870 any- 
body, no matter how ignorant, could 
enter any medical school in the country. 
At the Harvard Medical School the 
examination for graduation was limited 
to five minutes in each of nine subjects ; 
and to get a degree it was only necessary 
to pass the examination in five subjects 
out of the nine. This past academic 
year the Harvard Medical School re- 
quired a degree in arts or science 
for admission to the School, and for 
many years past every graduate has 
been required to pass a thorough exam- 
ination in every subject of instruction 
embraced in his course before he could 
receive his diploma. Nine-tenths of 



Training for Medicine and Law 117 

the instruction now given in a good 
medical school is instruction given to 
individuals by highly trained and very 
skilful special instructors. These com- 
prehensive and costly improvements in 
medical education have commanded 
general approval ; and the schools which 
have effected them have been sup- 
ported by the sentiment of the medical 
profession and encouraged by liberal 
endowment. Legal education has also 
been immeasurably improved during 
the same period, partly by the action 
of the schools of law, and partly by 
state legislation and the influence of 
enlightened Bar Associations. Theo- 
logical education has changed less than 
any other form of professional education 
during the period under consideration, 



n8 The Gains Made in Education 

and three reasons may be given for 
its comparatively small growth. First, 
the requirements for admission to 
schools of theology before 1870 were 
much higher than those for admission to 
any other professional schools ; secondly, 
theological education has been terribly 
crippled by the unfortunate eleemosy- 
nary methods of recruiting the semina- 
ries; and thirdly, denominational limi- 
tations have affected unfavorably both 
teachers and students. Preconceived 
notions are always to be avoided in any 
search for truth ; but when the precon- 
ceived notions have attained in the 
mind of teacher or pupil a sort of 
unassailable sanctity, they become seri- 
ous hindrances to educational progress. 
Two other costly developments of 



The Higher Education of Women 119 

the past thirty years have influenced 
the whole course of education, from 
the primary school through the univer- 
sity. The first is the higher education 
of women, a development which has 
taken place within a single generation. 
There were detached and limited efforts 
toward that higher education before the 
Civil War, but the great development 
of the coeducational colleges and uni- 
versities, and of the separate colleges 
for women has taken place since that 
revelation of the nation's capacities. 
The woman college graduate already 
affects favorably the education of 
children of all ages. She affects also 
the attitude of school committees, 
secondary school-trustees, and univer- 
sity trustees toward the institutions 



120 The Gains Made in Education 

in their charge ; and she affects the prac- 
tice of medicine. The women's colleges 
have already demonstrated that the 
capacity of women to profit by the 
best educational methods in the most 
difficult subjects is quite equal to that 
of men, so far as acquisition goes. 
They have also demonstrated that young 
women of fair physique may pursue a 
full college course, not only without 
impairing their health and strength, 
but with simultaneous gain in bodily 
vigor. These are extraordinary suc- 
cesses to be won in a single generation. 
Grave doubts exist, and will exist for 
at least another generation, concerning 
the effects of the higher education of 
women on marriage, child-bearing, and 
family life; and these effects will, of 



The Welfare of the Body 121 

course, be the final tests of the utility 
of the higher education of women. 
No nation can afford to have any 
considerable proportion of its more 
intelligent women disqualified for their 
natural and highest career by a mis- 
directed training. Nothing but lives 
of strenuous activity and earnest service 
can justify the higher education for 
either men or women ; and this activity 
and service should be for each sex the 
most characteristic, indispensable, and 
exalted of which the sex is capable, on 
the whole and in the long run. I need 
not point out that the higher education 
of women has involved a large increase 
of expenditure on education. 

The second educational development 
felt along the whole line during the 



122 The Gains Made in Education 

period under consideration, is the 
increased attention given to the welfare 
of the body, and to athletic sports in 
schools and colleges. With characteris- 
tic American intensity these useful 
tendencies have been greatly exagger- 
ated ; yet incalculable good has resulted 
from them. That the attention of a 
community once Puritan or Calvinistic 
should be withdrawn from those Bible 
passages which express a deep sense of 
the vileness of the body, and should 
be turned toward those passages of 
opposite tenor which extol the holiness 
of our bodies, is certainly no misfor- 
tune. In the comparative abandon- 
ment of farm life a great variety of 
outdoor sports is necessary to defend 
society against bodily degeneration; 



Exercise in the Open Air 123 

but when one sees 35,000 people watch- 
ing with intense excitement a game 
of football, one cannot but regret that 
the most violent and least generally 
useful of all the sports should possess 
greatest interest for the public, because 
of its quality as a rough and somewhat 
dangerous combat. But at such times 
one should remember that this is only the 
acme of a widespread, persistent interest 
in a variety of outdoor sports — a variety 
great enough to meet all sorts of tastes 
and capacities, and to draw hundreds of 
thousands of boys and girls, and men 
and women, into enjoyable exercises 
in the open air. Men and women who 
are to be devoted to the intellectual 
life especially need a sound physical 
training in youth, and an inextinguish- 



124 The Gains Made in Education 

able liking for out-of-door exercise; 
otherwise the steady drain on the 
nervous system which this class under- 
goes will make of it a physically weak 
and unproductive class, to the great 
loss of the community. The inter- 
collegiate contests in sports, with their 
present elaborate organization and 
regular periodicity, are new phenomena 
in American education, and on their 
present scale are quite unknown in 
other countries. They are exagger- 
ated in number, and in frequency of 
occurrence; and they have given rise 
to mischievous antagonisms between 
institutions whose relations should have 
been of the friendliest; but intercolle- 
giate relations in athletic sports are 
gradually becoming fairer and more 



Gains Approved Though Costly 125 

amiable than they used to be, and if 
these competitions cannot yet be con- 
sidered one of the successes of American 
education, they need not be reckoned 
as one of its failures. Other inter- 
collegiate contests have grown out of 
the competitions in athletic sports, 
and some of these have good effects. 
Thus it is a good effect of intercol- 
legiate debating that it has distinctly 
promoted the careful study of history, 
economics, and current events. It is 
to be observed that this athletic develop- 
ment has been very costly, but that 
the cost is borne with satisfaction by 
the American public. 

Every educational improvement of 
the past thirty years that I have men- 
tioned has been costly; but every one 



126 The Gains Made in Education 

has justified itself in the eyes of the 
taxpayers, or of those who voluntarily 
pay for it; not one would now be re- 
called, and the total result encourages 
the expectation that large new expend- 
itures would commend themselves to 
the people at the start, and in the end 
would prove to be both profitable in 
the material sense and civilizing in the 
humane sense. 

You have doubtless noticed that the 
gains I have reported are chiefly in 
education above fourteen years of age. 
There has been improvement in the 
first eight grades since 1870, but it is 
relatively small. Yet the great majority 
of American children do not get beyond 
the eighth grade. Philanthropists, 
social philosophers, and friends of free 



Gains in Lower Grades Inadequate 127 

institutions, is that the fit educational 
outcome of a century of democracy in 
an undeveloped country of immense 
natural resources ? Leaders and guides 
of the people, is that what you think 
just and safe? People of the United 
States, is that what you desire and 
intend,? 



The Needs of American Public 
Schools 

[An address delivered before the Rhode Island Institute 
of Instruction, on October 23, 1902.] 



NEW EXPENDITURE FOR 
SCHOOLS 

ON October 17th I advocated 
before Connecticut teachers 
the expenditure of more money 
for education in the United States on 
the ground that the shortcomings and 
failures in American education, and 
the disappointments concerning its 
results, have been many and grievous; 
and on the next day I advocated before 
New Hampshire teachers increase of 
educational expenditure on the ground 
that many successes have been won by 
American schools and colleges, and that 
these successes, though involving in- 
I3 1 



132 New Expenditure for Schools 

creased expenditure, have been approved 
and rejoiced in by the American public. 
The first argument was an incitement 
to greater exertions, because of ill suc- 
cess, or of imperfect attainment of ends 
wisely sought; the second was an 
encouragement to greater expenditure 
because of the results achieved with the 
expenditure already made. To-night I 
wish to describe some of the objects for 
which increased expenditure should be 
made in the schools supported by taxa- 
tion, and to adduce some further con- 
siderations fitted to encourage Ameri- 
can communities to larger expenditure. 
The expenditure on school buildings 
has been generous during the last 
twenty years ; but in two respects most 
of the buildings erected during this 



Fire-proof School Buildings 133 

period have fallen far short of the 
proper standard. First, in cities and 
large towns all school buildings should 
be fire-proof, and particularly all halls 
and stairways should be fire-proof. 
Wooden staircases should be absolutely 
prohibited in schools intended for 
children under fifteen years of age. 
Secondly, the woodwork in the interior 
of school buildings should be reduced 
to the lowest terms, and should be 
carefully constructed with reference to 
the facility of keeping it clean, just as 
the woodwork in the interior of a modern 
hospital is constructed; and the mate- 
rials of walls in school buildings should 
not be absorbent, but, on the contrary, 
should resist both moisture and gases, 
and should be capable of thorough 



134 New Expenditure for Schools 

cleansing. The last remark applies also 
to the heating apparatus for school 
buildings. All flues, ducts, and boxes 
for the reception and conveyance of 
cold or hot air should be so built and 
disposed that their interiors can be 
cleaned. Any one who has examined 
with a lens the extraordinary amount 
of animal and vegetable matter which 
accumulates on a sheet of "tangle- 
foot" fly-paper placed in a cold-air 
box, at any season of the year when the 
ground is not covered with snow, will 
heartily concur in this prescription. 
The observance of these rules would, 
of course, demand additional initial 
expenditure on school buildings, but 
would diminish the cost of maintenance. 
Again, whether in town or country, a 



Decorated School Yards 135 

large open space, yard, or garden should 
be connected with every school build- 
ing, and should be kept neat, and 
decorated with shrubs and flowers. 
The denser the population in which the 
school is situated the greater the need 
of this open space; and the larger the 
school the larger should be the yard 
attached to the building. Here again 
is a call for a large additional expendi- 
ture; but it is an expenditure which 
the welfare of city children urgently 
demands. Every school should have 
the means of turning at least half its 
pupils into the open air simultaneously ; 
and the space about the school should 
be so arranged that hundreds of chil- 
dren can occupy it without marring 
its decorative vegetation. This means, 



136 New Expenditure for Schools 

of course, that the greater part of every 
school yard should have a surface of 
gravel or asphalt. Such grounds could 
be made useful in crowded quarters to 
many people besides the school chil- 
dren. If it be urged that it is impos- 
sible in American cities to depend on the 
permanent occupation of any particular 
district by a population which needs 
schools, and therefore that the con- 
struction of durable schoolhouses and 
the provision of grounds about them are 
inexpedient, I reply that if a school- 
house and its yard, once situated in the 
midst of a dense population, become 
unnecessary, it must be because the 
district has been abandoned as a resi- 
dence quarter in favor of factories, 
shops, or some other sort of productive 



Medical Inspection of Schools 137 

business ; and, therefore, if the city has 
provided in such a district a large school 
yard, it will be able to compensate 
itself for the loss on its building by the 
rise in the value of its land. 

Next to this improvement in school- 
houses and school yards comes improve- 
ment in the sanitary control and man- 
agement of schools. This control re- 
quires the services of skilful physicians ; 
and such a physician should be 
officially connected with every large 
school. It should be his duty to watch 
for contagious diseases, to prevent the 
too early return to school of children 
who have suffered from such diseases, 
to take thought for the eyes of the 
children, lest they be injured by read- 
ing or writing in bad postures or bad 



138 New Expenditure for Schools 

light, to advise concerning the rectifica- 
tion of remediable bodily defects in any 
of the children under his supervision, 
to give advice at the homes about the 
diet and sleep of the children whose 
nutrition is visibly defective, and, in 
short, to be the protector, counselor, 
and friend of the children and their 
parents with regard to health, normal 
growth, and the preservation of all the 
senses in good condition. Such medical 
supervision of school children would 
be costly, but it would be the most 
rewarding school expenditure that a 
community could make, even from the 
industrial or commercial point of view, 
since nothing impairs the well-being and 
productiveness of a community so much 
as sickness and premature disability 



Better-Trained Teachers 139 

or death. As in an individual, so in a 
nation, health and strength are the 
foundations of productiveness and pros- 
perity. 

The next object for additional 
expenditure is better teachers. Of 
course, teachers should know well 
the subjects they are to teach; 
but that is by no means suffi- 
cient. Every teacher should also 
know the best methods of teaching 
his subjects. College professors here- 
tofore have been apt to think that 
knowledge of the subject to be 
taught was the sufficient qualifica- 
tion of a teacher; but all colleges, as 
well as all schools, have suffered im- 
measurable losses as a result of this 
delusion. Of course, it is better for a 



140 New Expenditure for Schools 

teacher to know his subject without 
knowing the right method of teaching 
it, than to acquire a formal method 
without knowing the subject ; because a 
conscientious teacher by experimenting 
on his pupils may in years acquire a good 
method at their expense; but teachers 
who are acquainted at the start with both 
subject and method are what schools 
and colleges urgently need. To secure 
this double proficiency means a greater 
expenditure on the training of teachers. 
Under the head of better teachers may 
best be mentioned certain specific desid- 
erata such as a larger proportion of 
male teachers in urban school systems, 
a larger proportion of women teachers 
who have been educated at college, and 
a larger proportion of both men and 



Open-Air Teaching 141 

women who have received a genuine 
normal school training. All these are 
expensive desiderata. 

With better teachers, numerous other 
improvements would come in, as, for 
instance, a better teaching of literature 
and of history, and better biological 
and geographical instruction, these 
natural history studies being pursued 
by the pupils in the open air as well as 
in the schoolrooms. I have elsewhere 
urged that all public open spaces 
— country parks, forests, beaches, city 
squares, gardens, or parkways — should 
be utilized for the instruction of 
the children of the public schools by 
teachers capable of interesting them in 
the phenomena of plant and animal life. 
But this means quite a new breed of 



142 New Expenditure for Schools 

common school teachers. The teaching 
of geography in the open air is a delight- 
ful form of instruction; but it requires 
a teacher fully possessed of the princi- 
ples of physiography, and knowing how 
to illustrate these principles on a small 
scale in gutters, brooks, gullies, ravines, 
hillsides, and hilltops. Some nature- 
study of this desirable sort has been 
already introduced into American 
schools ; but it is not persisted in through 
years enough of the school course. 
Much more of this sort of study is 
needed, beginning in the kindergarten 
and going through the high school. 
Vacation schools can give this sort 
of instruction to great advantage. It 
must be confessed that it is an expen- 
sive kind of instruction ; but this is one 



Fewer Pupils to a Teacher 143 

of the places at which more money 
should be spent. 

Given better teachers, the next addi- 
tional expenditure should be due to a 
large reduction in the number of pupils 
placed before a single teacher. This 
number may now be said to vary from 
forty to sixty in the different school sys- 
tems of the United States. The higher 
number is monstrous and the lower 
far too large. Twenty to twenty-five 
pupils to a teacher are quite enough, 
if there are to be secured an adequate 
degree of attention to the individual 
pupil and a proper classification of each 
group of pupils according to their 
quality and capacity. This is an 
improvement very urgently needed in 
the American schools of to-day. It 



144 New Expenditure for Schools 

would doubtless cost a good deal of 
money, but it would not necessarily 
double the item of salaries; for one 
''competent teacher, with an intelligent 
though less experienced assistant, can 
take good care of forty pupils. When 
from forty to sixty pupils are allotted 
to a single teacher with no assistant, 
there is no opportunity for individual 
instruction ; the whole group must move 
on together; and it is inevitable that 
the brighter pupils should be sacrificed 
to the duller, which is the most wasteful 
thing a school can do. The improve- 
ment of which I am now speaking 
would lift American education to quite 
another plane of efficiency, and would 
make the life of the teacher vastly 
more interesting, more rewarding, and 



Pensions for Teachers 145 

happier. The personal contact between 
teacher and pupil would be more 
frequent and intimate, and the teacher's 
function would change from driving 
a flock to leading on and stimulating 
individuals. 

In order to keep good a large staff 
of teachers employed by a city or town 
a system of retiring allowances for 
teachers is indispensable. It is the 
American practice to keep in office 
superannuated or partially disabled 
teachers who have served long and 
well, and to pay them their salaries 
until death or complete disability over- 
takes them. This practice is uneconom- 
ical, and very injurious to the children 
who come under the charge of such 
partially disabled or senile teachers. It 



146 New Expenditure for Schools 

is considerate toward the few veterans, 
but very inconsiderate toward the hun- 
dreds of children whose education is 
impaired. A proper pension system 
gives the managers of a school system 
the means of retiring such teachers, 
and of replacing them by fresh, well- 
selected appointees, without causing any 
hardships, or wounding any feelings. A 
good pension system is not expensive; 
for when an old teacher retires on an 
allowance the retirement will ordinarily 
give rise to several shif tings of place, 
and the vacancy really filled is one near 
the foot of the scale of salaries. There 
is a pension to pay, but there comes 
upon the pay-roll a newcomer's salary 
which is much smaller than the salary 
of the teacher of long service. Pensions, 



Better Superintendence 147 

or retiring allowances, would not there- 
fore be the cause of a large new expen- 
diture, but would instead bring about 
a great increase in the competency or 
efficiency of any urban school system. 
The universal employment of highly 
trained superintendents in both urban 
and rural systems is the next improve- 
ment of which I would speak. This 
improvement has been partially intro- 
duced ; but it ought to become universal, 
and the quality of the superintendence 
should be always rising, until the posi- 
tion of superintendent shall be recog- 
nized as the highest in a school system, 
whether in city or country. A single 
superintendent can, of course, serve 
several rural districts or towns; and 
to obtain the right kind of superin- 



148 New Expenditure for Schools 

tendent such cooperation is necessary. 
In general, the aid of the State is also 
necessary to provide rural communities 
with competent superintendents. Such 
superintendents should be entirely in- 
dependent of political influences, and 
should enjoy a large measure of author- 
ity and freedom in their functions. 
They ought, as a rule, to be men or 
women of college education, who have 
had some experience themselves as 
teachers in schools or academies. The 
kind of superintendent that I have in 
mind is one who comes into immediate 
contact with both teachers and pupils. 
The wide-field superintendence, such 
as a state superintendent may exercise, 
is of course desirable; but such a 
remote official may not have the imme- 



Business Agents 149 

diate good influence on the teaching, 
discipline, and business management 
of the schools which the rural superin- 
tendent and the inspector or supervisor 
in large city systems may exercise. 
It is the man or woman who is constantly 
going about among the schools in his 
or her charge whose educational quality 
needs to be raised. The head of a state 
system, or of a large city system, is an 
administrator. The rural superinten- 
dent or city supervisor is primarily an 
inspector, teacher, and guide. 

All business or executive functions 
ought to be withdrawn from the school 
committees or boards and handed over 
in part to the superintendent, and in 
part to a business agent, who, like 
the superintendent, is a permanent 



150 New Expenditure for Schools 

salaried officer. Since the present sub- 
committees of school committees or 
boards serve without pay, the salaries 
of these business agents would, of 
course, be an additional charge; but 
a competent and experienced agent, 
by conducting school business judi- 
ciously, will always save more than 
his salary, and will, moreover, greatly 
increase the wholesomeness and effi- 
ciency of the schools. 

An expensive improvement in the 
public schools, but one urgently 
needed, is the enrichment of the 
school programme for the years 
between nine and fourteen, and 
the introduction of selection among 
studies as early as ten years of age. 
Unless this is done, and done soon, 



Better School Programmes 151 

the public schools will cease to be 
resorted to by the children of well-to-do 
Americans. The private and endowed 
schools offer a choice of foreign lan- 
guages, for instance, as early as ten 
years of age and even earlier; and 
everybody knows that this is the age 
at which to begin the study of foreign 
languages, whether ancient or modern. 
In large cities it seems to be already 
settled that the private and endowed 
schools get the children of all parents 
who can afford to pay their charges. 
One reason for this result is that the 
programmes of the public schools are 
distinctly inferior to the programmes 
of the good private and endowed 
schools; and they are inferior at pre- 
cisely this point — they have too limited 



152 New Expenditure for Schools 

a range of studies in the years between 
nine and fourteen. It is, of course, 
not desirable that each individual child 
should pursue a great variety of studies ; 
but it is essential that each individual 
child should have access to a variety 
of studies. The tendency in all American 
school systems has been to segregate 
the foreign languages, the mathematics 
beyond arithmetic, and the higher scien- 
tific and historical studies in the high 
school programmes — which means that 
only that small proportion of children 
who go on to the high school have any 
access to those studies. No arrange- 
ment could possibly be more undemo- 
cratic; although its inventors did not 
foresee the real working of their method 
in this respect. The achievement of this 



Departmental Instruction 153 

enrichment of the programmes would 
cause the retention of children in 
school for a larger number of years, and 
the carrying forward of more children 
into the upper schools; and these are 
effects greatly to be desired. I am 
bound to acknowledge, however, that 
these changes would be decidedly costly ; 
they would require more accomplished 
and more skilful teachers for the years 
between nine and fifteen, and more 
apparatus for teaching; and if they 
were successful there would be more 
children to teach in the upper grades 
of the system. 

An incidental effect of these changes 
would be the development of depart- 
mental instruction — that is, skilful 
teachers would teach one subject 



154 New Expenditure for Schools 

through several grades, instead of 
teaching all subjects for one grade. It 
was in 1766 that Harvard College — then 
no more than a good high school — 
abandoned the method of teaching 
all subjects to one class by one man. 
The American public school system 
bids fair to be nearly one hundred and 
fifty years behind Harvard College in 
adopting the departmental method — a 
method which develops in both teachers 
and pupils a growing interest in their 
work, and increases greatly the personal 
influence of teachers, because the stay- 
ing pupils work through several suc- 
cessive years under the same teacher. 
Another effect of this enrichment of the 
programmes would be the postpone- 
ment for every individual pupil of the 



An Open Upward Path 155 

grave decision between studies which 
permit access to the higher institutions 
of learning, and studies which do not. 
The later this decision can be made the 
better for the individual, and the 
better for the schools ; because a course 
of study which is preparatory to all 
possible future routes in education is sure 
to be a better course than the poorer of 
two courses, one of which leads on to the 
higher institutions and the other does 
not. 

The election of studies in secondary 
schools involves increased expenditure 
for two reasons : first, because there are 
more subjects to be taught; and, 
secondly, because each subject will be 
carried further than it is under a 
uniform prescribed course. Moreover, 



156 New Expenditure for Schools 

the classes in each subject will be 
smaller than they are under a pre- 
scribed system, because the total num- 
ber of pupils will be divided among a 
larger number of subjects. The elec- 
tion of studies in secondary schools is 
already introduced in many places, 
generally under the form of several 
groups of studies bearing different 
names; but sometimes, as in Boston, 
in a frankly elective method. The 
experience of the American colleges in 
regard to the elective system demon- 
strates that it is much more costly 
than the prescribed; but it is also so 
much more effective for all educational 
purposes, whether mental or moral, 
that it advances steadily in all the 
faculties of arts and xiences, and 



Manual and Technical Training 157 

never takes a backward step. It may- 
be safely assumed, therefore, that it 
will make steady progress in the 
secondary schools of the country, and 
with like results — greater cost, but 
greater profit. 

In many scattered places in the 
United States perfect demonstration 
has already been given that manual 
training and instruction in the mechan- 
ical arts and trades are, in the first 
place valuable as means of mental and 
moral training, and in the second 
place useful for the individual toward 
obtaining a livelihood, and for the 
nation toward developing its industries. 
Accordingly, manual training schools, 
mechanic arts high schools and trade 
schools ought to become habitual parts 



158 New Expenditure for Schools 

of the American school system; and 
normal schools and colleges ought to 
provide optional instruction in these 
subjects, since all public school teachers 
ought to understand them. Such 
schools are more expensive than schools 
which do not require mechanical appa- 
ratus and the service of good mechanics 
as instructors; but there can be no 
doubt that they will repay promptly 
their cost to the community which 
maintains them. 

Vacation schools have also demon- 
strated their great usefulness in cities 
and large towns. The best ones offer 
manual training for both boys and 
girls, as well as book work, and are 
heartily welcomed by both parents and 
children. They combat effectively the 



Vacation Schools 159 

mistaken policy of long vacations for 
children who cannot escape from the 
crowded city streets and tenements. 
Indeed, the experience recently gained 
in city vacation schools and in the sum- 
mer courses of colleges and universities 
proves that the long summer vacation 
of nine to thirteen weeks is by no means 
necessary to the health of either school 
children or maturer students. The best 
method is to keep the pupil in vigor 
all the year by means of frequent 
recesses during school hours, free half- 
days twice a week, and occasional 
respites of a week. Then the vacation 
school in summer should offer a distinct 
variety of work in subjects different 
from those pursued the rest of the 
year; for children and adults alike 



160 New Expenditure for Schools 

find great refreshment in mere change 
of work. For example, the competent 
college professor may, indeed, seek 
change of air and scene during the 
summer vacation, but it is for the pur- 
pose of doing under advantageous con- 
ditions a kind of intellectual work 
different from that which engrosses him 
in term-time, and not with the intention 
of keeping his mind vacant or inert. 
Furthermore, vacation schools in the 
poor quarters of closely built cities are 
downright refuges from the physical 
squalor and moral dangers of the 
streets. It is obvious that vacation 
schools on an adequate scale must 
cause a serious addition to the school 
expenditure of a city or large town; 
for they require the services of an 



More Attention to Drawing 161 

additional corps of teachers, and they 
need additional apparatus, materials, 
and service. It is equally obvious 
that these schools are urgently needed 
by a large proportion of the population 
on grounds which are simultaneously 
physical, mental, and moral. I say 
nothing here about the kindergarten, 
because, as I have twice pointed out of 
late, the kindergarten has already been 
somewhat extensively adopted as part 
of the public school system, and is 
winning more and more favor. 

Another additional expenditure which 
public schools ought to incur as soon as 
possible is a development of instruc- 
tion in drawing. Drawing is a mode of 
expression which ought to be as univer- 
sal as writing. There is no art, trade, 



1 62 New Expenditure for Schools 

or profession in which it is not useful, 
and the enjoyment of life may be 
greatly increased by the habitual use 
of the pencil in sketching interesting 
objects of all sorts, natural or artificial. 
Time for drawing can be obtained in 
school programmes by diminishing the 
time given to penmanship. Instruction 
in one art will help the other, and of 
the two, drawing is the more instruc- 
tive, since it trains the powers of obser- 
vation, and helps to make the retained 
impressions both accurate and vivid. 
It is an incidental advantage of draw- 
ing that it reinforces the teaching of 
geometry, and particularly of solid 
geometry. The comparative neglect of 
geometry is one of the most curious 
phenomena in American education, 



Music a Culture Subject 163 

when the importance of that subject 
in the mechanical and constructive 
arts in which Americans excel is duly- 
considered. 

Music is another subject which ought 
to be made much more of in all American 
schools, public, private, and endowed, 
than it now is. The elementary schools 
do more for music than the secondary- 
schools; so that the course of musical 
instruction is broken off too early, and 
the skill gained before fourteen years 
of age is lost later through disuse. 
A moderate degree of musical knowl- 
edge and skill adds greatly to the 
enjoyment of life, no matter how the 
livelihood may be earned. To increase 
rational joy is one of the objects which 
public education should always keep 



164 New Expenditure for Schools 

in sight. I need not say that music 
has always been a true culture subject, 
an ally of literature, art, and religion. 

Lastly, the schools ought to be pro- 
vided liberally with all appliances which 
can improve either teaching or admin- 
istration, and with all service which 
can relieve the teachers of unnecessary 
bodily or mental strains. Such appli- 
ances are books, maps, charts, models, 
diagrams, lantern-slides and electric 
lanterns, telephones, collections of speci- 
mens, physical and chemical apparatus, 
casts, photographs, pictures, typewriters 
and pianos. To try to teach without 
these aids is like trying to stop a con- 
flagration with buckets passed from 
hand to hand, or like starting for 
Chicago in a one-horse chaise instead of 



More Appliances for Teaching 165 

in the Empire State Express. The 
prevailing poverty of our schools in 
these respects is lamentable. At every 
stage of education, from the kindergar- 
ten through the university, an alert 
and progressive teacher can save his 
or her own time and energy by trans- 
ferring the mechanical or routine parts 
of his or her work to an assistant who 
receives a much smaller compensation 
than the teacher. To save that valu- 
able time and energy for the best 
work is the truest economy, yet this 
economy is seldom practised. In both 
these respects American schools fall far 
below the standards of well-conducted 
commercial and industrial establish- 
ments. 
I have thus enumerated various 



1 66 New Expenditure for Schools 

ways in which a greatly increased 
expenditure on American schools ought 
to be made. This audience of teachers 
may perhaps have observed that I 
have not said a word about raising 
salaries. That is because I do not 
consider that direction the best one 
for additional school expenditure. The 
teacher needs many other things more 
than higher pay — good light and air 
to work in, medical inspection and care 
for the school, all available assistance 
in the schoolroom, all useful apparatus 
for teaching — particularly that which 
appeals to the eyes and fingers of the 
pupils — relief from mechanical and cler- 
ical work, a better tenure, a pension at 
disability, and expert instead of ama- 
teur supervision. And, on the other 



Expenditure Should Be Doubled 167 

hand, the community needs to have 
the teacher a more intelligent, better- 
informed, robuster, and gayer person, 
that children will "take to" and wish 
to please, and that parents will be glad 
to have visit them in their homes. 

With these objects in view the 
expenditure in those parts of our 
country where it is now smallest 
ought to be raised as rapidly as 
possible to the level of those regions 
where it is now greatest; and in 
those regions where the expenditure 
is now most liberal it ought to be 
doubled as soon as possible. 

I know that some people will say 
that it is impossible to increase public 
expenditure in the total, and therefore 
impossible to increase it for schools. I 



1 68 New Expenditure for Schools 

deny both allegations. Public expendi- 
ture has been greatly increased within 
the last thirty years, and so has school 
expenditure. What the country has 
done it can do again; and, further- 
more, it can better its past record. 
Moreover, school expenditure ought 
to be increased, even though the total 
expenditures of the community should 
not rise; because it yields a greater 
return than any other expenditure. 
It is, indeed, far the most profitable 
of all the forms of public expenditure; 
and this is true whether one looks 
first to material prosperity, or to mental 
and moral well-being; whether one 
regards chiefly average results, or the 
results obtained through highly gifted 
individuals. 



The Test of Popular Education 169 

But some sceptic may ask, how do 
we know that even the expenditure the 
country now makes for education is 
worth making? And again, how do 
we know what the results of popular 
education are? What test is there for 
the efficiency of popular education? 
Let me try, in conclusion, to answer 
these grave questions. 

In the first place, as I look back on 
the progress of American education 
since the Civil War, I think I see that 
education is the one agency for pro- 
moting intelligence and righteousness 
which has unquestionably gained power 
in the United States during the last 
half-century — the one agency which 
has not only retained its hold on the 
democratic masses, but has distinctly 



170 New Expenditure for Schools 

gained more and more public confidence, 
and received from the democracy greater 
and greater moral and material sup- 
port. The democracy has believed 
more and more in the efficiency of 
schools and colleges; and schools and 
colleges have more and more taught 
and acted out democracy. This is 
only saying, on the one hand, that the 
popular masses perceive that it is in 
large part the schools and colleges 
which implant in successive genera- 
tions democratic ideals and make them 
fit to be free; and, on the other, that 
the schools and colleges believe in the 
democratic ideals, and fervently desire 
to promote brotherhood, unity, and the 
practical acceptance of the Pauline 
doctrine, ''every one members one of 



Less Respect for Legislatures 171 

another." Can we say of any other of 
the organized inspiriting and moralizing 
forces in American society that it has 
gained strength and increased its 
influence during the past fifty 
years? The efficiency of legislatures 
and the respect in which they are 
held have unquestionably declined 
since the Civil War. American 
legislative assemblies, municipal, state 
and national, have repeatedly shown 
themselves unable to solve, or even 
begin to solve, the new problems 
which have arisen in rapid succes- 
sion out of the incredible changes 
in industry, commerce, and trans- 
portation. In other words, legis- 
latures have not been able to keep up 
with American progress in other fields. 



172 New Expenditure for Schools 

Some of them have ceased in large 
measure to be deliberative assemblies, 
and habitually transact important parts 
of their business in secret committee 
meetings. Others have proved to be 
in the hands of one man, himself not a 
public official; so that legislation is 
adopted or rejected at that one man's 
will — sometimes a purchasable will. 
Congress has repeatedly disappointed 
the people in respect both to its intelli- 
gence and to its magnanimity ; and with 
a rather piteous recognition of its own 
incapacity it has repeatedly taken refuge 
in the discretion of the Executive. 

Most persons will also agree that the 
courts of our country are as a whole 
less efficient and less respected to-day 
than they were a generation or two 



Less Respect for Courts 173 

generations ago. Their decline is pain- 
fully apparent in criminal matters — 
and is plainly visible in civil matters 
also. The efficacy of the death penalty 
has been well-nigh destroyed by the 
delays ordered or permitted by courts. 
The courts often seem embarrassed by 
conflicting precedents or contradictory 
decision, and paralyzed by multiplying 
technicalities and ingenuities of counsel. 
Moreover, they not infrequently give 
uncertain sounds. Hence reverence for 
law is not maintained at its old level; 
and lawless violence against suspected 
criminals claims justification in the 
delays and uncertainties of legal pro- 
cesses. 

The church and its ministers cannot 
be said to have risen in public estima- 



174 New Expenditure for Schools 

tion since the Civil War. Its control 
over education has distinctly dimin- 
ished. In some of its branches it 
seems to cling to archaic metaphysics 
and morbid poetic imaginings ; in others 
it apparently inclines to take refuge 
in decorums, pomps, costumes, and 
observances. On the whole, it has not 
been able to keep up with the progress 
of either science or democracy — those 
Atalantas of the nineteenth century 
that never stop fov golden apples 
dropped in their path — and it has 
shown little readiness to rely on the 
intense reality of the universal senti- 
ments to which Jesus appealed, or to 
go back to the simple preaching of the 
gospel of brotherhood and unity — of 
love to God and love to man. So the 



Millions Unchurched 175 

church as a whole has to-day no influ- 
ence whatever on many millions of our 
fellow countrymen — called Jews or 
Christians, Protestants or Catholics, 
though they be. We still believe that 
the voluntary church is the best of 
churches; because a religion which is 
accepted under compulsion is really 
no religion at all for the individual 
soul, though it may be a social embel- 
lishment, or a prop for the State. Yet, 
believing thus, we have to admit that 
the voluntary church in the United 
States has no hold on a large and 
increasing part of the population. 

By no positive fault of their own, 
but by a sort of negative incapacity, 
legislature, court, and church seem to 
be passing through some transition 



176 New Expenditure for Schools 

which temporarily impairs their power ; 
but the schools and colleges in the 
United States, while changing and 
developing rapidiy, have suffered no 
impairment of vigor or influence. 
On the contrary, education as an 
uplifting agency was never so effective 
with the democracy as it is to-day. 
To redeem and vivify legislatures, 
courts, and churches, what agency is 
so promising as education? Next to 
steady productive labor education is the 
prime factor in social and industrial 
progress. This primacy of education 
among the various civilizing factors 
affords the strongest possible induce- 
ment to spend every dollar on popular 
education which can be spent advan- 
tageously. It also gives an answer, 



The Primacy of Edttcation 177 

drawn from experience, to the question 
— is the present expenditure worth 
making? A reasonable foresight sup- 
plies another answer. We should ask 
ourselves — what better remedy than 
wise popular education, what other 
thorough remedy, can be imagined for 
the new evils which threaten society 
because of the new facilities for making 
huge combinations of producers or 
middlemen, of farmers or miners or 
manufacturers, of rich or poor, of 
laborers or capitalists? Masses of men 
are much more excitable than average 
individuals, and will do in gregarious 
passion things which the individuals 
who compose the masses would not 
do. A crowd is dangerously liable to 
sudden rage or — what is worse — sudden 



178 New Expenditure for Schools 

terror; and either emotion may over- 
power the sense of responsibility, and 
annihilate for the moment both pru- 
dence and mercy. There never was a 
time when common sentiments and 
desires could be so quickly massed, 
never a time when the force of multi- 
tudes could be so effectively concen- 
trated at a selected point for a common 
purpose. Against this formidable danger 
there is only one trustworthy defense. 
The masses of the people must be 
taught to use their reason, to seek the 
truth, and to love justice and mercy. 
There is no safety for democratic 
society in truth held, or justice loved, 
by the few; the millions must mean to 
do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly 
with their God. The millions must be 



The Masses Must Reason 179 

taught to discuss, not fight; to trust 
publicity, not secrecy; and to take 
timely public precautions against every 
kind of selfish oppression. To give this 
instruction steadily and universally 
society possesses no organized agency 
which compares in present efficiency 
and future promise with the schools. 
Therefore, the present expenditure on 
schools is fully justified and increased 
expenditure urgently demanded. I can 
almost hear the objection — this expec- 
tation of popular schools is extravagant 
— they are only for teaching reading, 
writing, and ciphering. Not so, I reply. 
The common schools should impart the 
elements of physical, mental, and moral 
training, and in morals the elements 
are by far the most valuable part. 



180 New Expenditure for Schools 

Secondly, let me deal briefly with 
our sceptic's demand for a test of the 
results of popular education. I think 
there must be some sure-working prac- 
tical tests of the efficiency of popular 
education. Can they be stated ? Con- 
cerning an educated individual, we 
may fairly ask, can he see straight ? 
can he recognize the fact? Next, can 
he draw a just inference from established 
facts? Thirdly, has he self-control? 
or do his passions run away with him? 
or untoward events daunt him? 
These are fair tests of his mental and 
moral capacity. One other test we 
may fairly apply to an educated indi- 
vidual — does he continue to grow in 
power and in wisdom throughout his 
life? His body ceases to grow at 



Lifelong Increase in Wisdom 181 

twenty-five or thirty years of age — 
does his soul continue to grow? It is 
obvious that these tests are difficult 
of application to a nation; but we are 
not wholly without means of applying 
them to our own people as a mass. 
The people live by agriculture, mining, 
and manufacturing; and these great 
concerns cannot be successfully man- 
aged unless multitudes of men recog- 
nize essential facts, and draw the right 
inferences from the truths they embody. 
The success with which the American 
people get their livelihood shows that 
there is much soundness in their mental 
training. Millions of them must be 
able to observe accurately and to infer 
justly. One of the most difficult tasks 
for a man who thinks imperfectly is to 



1 82 New Expenditure for Schools 

get over a delusion. Whenever the 
American people through the reasoning 
power of millions get over a delusion, 
they shed light on the efficiency of 
their own education. We have had a 
recent piece of evidence of this sort in 
the recovery of our people from the 
widespread silver delusion. Do their 
passions run away with the people? 
They did not after the Civil War, the 
forbearance of the Confederates being 
as remarkable as that of the Unionists. 
They did not at the close of the fighting 
with the poor Spaniards in Cuba. 
Never were terms of surrender more 
generous, or, I may add, more ingenious. 
The same self-control was manifested 
in the intelligent withdrawal of our 
soldiers from China. Do untoward 



Popular Self -Control 183 

events daunt the people? No. As a 
rule, our population bears calamities 
and losses with constancy and calmness. 
The country lately lost its singularly 
beloved Chief Magistrate, and lost him 
in an intensely mortifying way ; but our 
Government never staggered even for 
a moment, and the whole work and 
life of the people went on without a 
halt, or even a quiver, except for the 
momentary thrill of horror and humilia- 
tion. In the recent coal strike, which 
doubled the price of a necessary of life 
and caused widespread injuries and 
anxieties, the attitude of the much- 
enduring public was calm and discreet. 
The public took sides with neither 
party, looked on quietly at the irrational 
strife, accepted no bad advice, tried 



184 New Expenditure for Schools 

no unconstitutional remedies — just bore 
the losses, and waited five months for 
the combatants to accept that method 
of inquiry, discussion, and mutual con- 
sideration which ought to have been 
adopted when the conflict first arose. 
The strike has furnished a good illustra- 
tion of popular self-control under very 
irritating conditions. Such are some 
of the indications that American educa- 
tion has not wholly failed of its high 
object. 

Can we apply to the education of the 
nation the ultimate test which we 
finally apply to the education of an 
individual ? As the national life grows 
broad and rich does the national soul or 
spirit grow with it ? Does mental and 
spiritual progress keep pace with ma- 



The People Rise to Higher Work 185 

terial? God only knows; but mortals 
may discern some facts which make 
toward the conclusion we should all 
like to establish. Thus, in regard to 
the mental powers of the population, 
whenever new machines, be they 
reapers, looms, cranes, crucibles, guns, 
or electric motors, have required more 
intelligent men behind them, the nation 
has invariably supplied on demand the 
needed men. This evidence is furnished 
incessantly on an immense scale, and 
it signifies that the people rise to their 
higher work.. When a quiet villager, 
who has been just caring for his farm 
and his sawmill, is made school agent 
or chairman of the Board of Health, 
and is forced to think of all the chil- 
dren in the town, or of all the sick in it, 



1 86 New Expenditure for Schools 

if he does his work well, grasps ideas 
novel to him, and by energetic and 
judicious action spreads them through 
the town, we say that he has grown to 
his enlarging work. On a higher plane, 
that is just what we do say of Benja- 
min Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. 
In like manner the American people 
has grown to its expanding and novel 
industries, arts, and commerce, and has 
clearly done its daily work better than 
the competing nations. Hence, the 
total training of its youth, an important 
part of which has been given by the 
schools and colleges, must have been 
measurably successful. 

The extraordinary sale of dictionaries 
and encyclopedias in the United States 
demonstrates the existence in innumer- 



Reading Habits of the People 187 

able households of the habit of looking 
up the meaning of words, and the facts 
about unfamiliar topics encountered 
in conversation or in reading. This 
habit implies a lifelong desire to learn. 
The reading habits of the people pro- 
long mental activity and growth, widen 
interests, and quicken sympathies; for 
the great mass of the people's reading 
matter is pure and instructive, in spite 
of the mortifying fact that parts of 
most daily newspapers are given over 
to Cloacina and the Furies, 

But all this refers to the national 
mind applied to things material, or to 
the ordinary plane of commonplace 
life. How about things spiritual, the 
great moral movements, and the refine- 
ments and adornments of life ? Is there 



1 88 New Expenditure for Schools 

any better test of unselfish and gentle 
feeling in a multitudinous people than 
their habitual treatment of women 
and children? Now, on the whole, 
Americans of all classes treat their 
women in large things and small better 
than any other people treat theirs. 
American men are laughed at by 
foreigners for making their wives 
and daughters extravagant and self- 
indulgent. On farms the women do not 
work in the fields as all foreign peasant 
women do. For factories we have in 
many states protective legislation in 
regard to the employment of women 
and children. There is a very significant 
difference between the expectation on 
the part of the American people of 
personal purity and domestic honor in 



Treatment of Women and Children 189 

their public men, and the expectation 
in those regards on the part of any- 
European people concerning their kings, 
princes, and high officials. The poli- 
tician who disappoints the American 
people in that respect is lost, be he 
ever so serviceable a person. As to the 
treatment of children, it is certain that 
the discipline in American families and 
schools is gentler and more considerate 
than in other countries. Moreover, 
there has been a great advance in this 
respect within thirty years, an advance 
which has made the whole people 
happier and better. This is a wide- 
spread gain, made in millions of homes 
and schools ; and it not only tells on the 
present moral condition of our people, 
but is of the highest promise for the 



190 New Expenditure for Schools 

future. Somehow slavery is gone and 
intemperance has been checked and 
made disgraceful. The results testify 
to the moral forces which produce them. 
If one would estimate the progress 
of a people in the fine arts and in 
science, one must go to the works of 
the few men who best illustrate the 
national art and science. In the whole 
history of sculpture can any one point 
to a more informing, inspiring, and 
touching military monument than the 
Shaw monument on Boston Common? 
There are bigger and costlier ; but none 
more expressive, juster, or more uplift- 
ing. Look through the whole list of 
astronomical observatories since such 
establishments existed and you will not 
find one which, in proportion to its 



The Use Made of Riches 191 

resources, has produced so much routine 
work and made so many new discoveries 
as the Harvard College observatory 
under its present director. In the 
prompt and general application of 
scientific discovery to the service of 
humanity Americans certainly excel 
other nations. It is enough to mention 
anesthesia, the telegraph, the tele- 
phone, and the innumerable inventions 
of labor-saving machinery. The use 
made of riches is another test of the 
moral condition and standards of a 
people. Now, the stream of gifts from 
private persons to schools, colleges, 
universities, libraries, art galleries, 
museums, and laboratories in the United 
States flows in a volume which has 
never been approached in the history 



192 New Expenditure for Schools 

of the world. It is said that there are 
only six towns in all Massachusetts the 
inhabitants of which have no access 
to free books. It is not only the 
few very rich men who provide 
educational endowments. Every year 
thousands of Americans take part 
in this most intelligent beneficence, 
wiser than any endowment of hospi- 
tals, asylums, or infirmaries, because 
a work of construction instead of 
palliation. Truly there are some 
encouraging evidences that the soul 
of the people keeps growing. 

So, in good heart and hope, learning 
from failures what not to do, and 
from successes what next to attempt, 
we may all press on together toward 
our national goal — the perfecting of an 



The National Goal 193 

intelligent individual citizenship in a 
Christian democracy. 



APR l L 190? 



CAT. D 



